Legal & Ethical Nursing Fundamentals

Nursing is a profession fraught with ethical quandaries. These legal and professional issues can stem from relationships with supervisors, patients, the public, co-workers, and vendors the nurse sees on a daily basis.

Patient Care

• One of the fundamentals of nursing ethics is maintaining the ability of patients, to the extent possible, to direct their own health care. At times, this may mean letting the patient make decisions that the nurse does not feel are medically advisable.

Confidentiality

• Keeping confidentiality is an important part of a nurse's legal and ethical obligations. Many times, friends and family members will ask the nurse for medical information that the patient may not want shared. It is the nurse's responsibility to see that this protected information remains confidential.

Prevention

• Ethical standards for nurses require that not only are illness and injury properly treated, but prevention of further harm must be undertaken whenever possible. This can mean everything from following hand-washing protocol to prevent infection to notifying the next of kin when a patient plans to harm himself.