Ethics & Law in Nursing

Nurses may come across several dilemmas, legal or ethical in nature, during their career. However, most nurses are not trained to deal with such issues and therefore end up helpless in case a question on their ethics or conduct is raised. In today's circumstances, it is more than just a requirement and every nurse must be aware of ways to protect themselves from malpractice suit and understand its damaging consequences to their careers.

Significance

• A law is a rule which is clearly laid down, recorded and any deviation thereof is punishable. However, ethics is not measurable and cannot be defined like a law; ethics rely more on personal perception of issues and therefore are difficult to be divided into right and wrong.

Situations

• There can be four situations pertaining to nursing laws and ethics. The first situation is both ethical as well as legal. Such a situation could arise when a nurse gives a patient wrong medication and then does not report the same or tries to cover up the situation to protect him or her from legal action.

  The second situation could be ethical but not legal, like allowing a patient to smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes. The third could be legal but not ethical, like forcing a patient to do something against his or her wishes or without taking him or her into complete confidence. The fourth situation could be one which is neither legal nor ethical, an example of this situation could be a nurse carrying out a doctor's orders as instructed.

Training

• Nurses face several situations on a daily basis which may be ethically right yet legally unacceptable or vice versa. Situations like death, abortion and mercy death are often bound to put a nurse into a dilemma. Also, a small lapse on the part of a nurse can severely jeopardize the health of a patient and cause irreparable damage. In such a case, the kin of the patient or the patient himself may decide to sue the nurse for negligence.

Common Issue

• One of the most common ethical issues that a nurse or any other person may face is that of abortion. It is not uncommon to see women popping birth control and pregnancy prevention pills on a regular basis. However, it becomes an ethical question when a nurse has to provide a woman with abortion pills to control pregnancy since the patient involved cannot financially and/or emotionally afford a child. However, this may or may not be legal. What can really confuse a nurse is their obligation to promote family planning, safe sex and use of contraceptives as opposed to their own personal ethics.

What can be done?

• Nurses should be provided with proper information, training and material to understand how to deal with a situation than can jeopardize their career if they do not take a decision that is justifiable legally and not just ethically.

  The Canadian Nurses Association has come up with a CAN Code of Conduct which contains clear guidelines pertaining to ethical as well as legal dilemmas faced by nurses in Canada. In a similar fashion, nurse's associations worldwide should become proactive and provide training as well as establish clear ethical and legally acceptable guidelines to protect nurses and prevent them from making any ethically unacceptable or legally punishable decision.