Question

1. Examine nurse practice acts, including the legal differences between licensed registered nurses and licensed practical (vocational) nurses?
2. Apply various legal principles, including negligence and malpractice privacy, confidentiality, reporting statutes,
, and doctrines that minimize one's, liability, when acting in leading and managing roles in clinical practices setting.

Answer 1

Ans) 1) The Nursing Practice Act (NPA) is the body of California law that mandates the Board to set out the scope of practice and responsibilities for RNs.

- The most basic difference between an LPN/LVN and an RN is that the former one requires a less formal program. An LPN performs certain medical duties but is not given responsibilities like an RN. An LPN has to work under the supervision of an RN.

- LPN is not assigned to a patient & will not be held accountable.

2) Ethical standards are based on the human principles of right and wrong.

- The differences between them are these: Legal standards are based on written law, while ethical standards are based on human rights and wrongs. Something can be legal but not ethical.

- The ethical principles that nurses must adhere to are the principles of justice, beneficence, nonmaleficence, accountability, fidelity, autonomy, and veracity. Justice is fairness.

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Many professional ethicists recommend using four basic values, or principles, to decide ethical issues:

Autonomy: Patients basically have the right to determine their own healthcare.

Justice: Distributing the benefits and burdens of care across society.

Beneficence: Doing good for the patient.

Nonmalfeasance: Making sure you are not harming the patient.

However, ethical values are not limited to just these four principles. There are other important values to consider, such as truth-telling, transparency, showing respect for patients and families, and showing respect for patients' own values.

In addition, medical ethics is not just a thought process- It also involves people skills, such as gathering the facts needed to make a decision and presenting your decision in a way that wins over the confidence of all parties.

It helps:

- To help resolve disputes between family, patients, physicians, or other parties- Often, the parties involved are operating strictly on emotion, which makes it difficult to come to a logical and fair decision. Ethics adds another dimension to help make decisions.

- To maintain a clear conscience- All doctors want to be sure they have done the right thing. Being an ethical physician is more important than making money or seeing as many patients as possible.

- To not make yourself look uninformed- Physicians sometimes stumble onto poor decisions because they did not understand their role, had not bothered to identify an ethical challenge, or hadn't thought the situation through to its logical conclusion.

- To maintain the respect of your patients- Ethical missteps can destroy the bond between doctor and patient. Patients often implicitly trust their doctors, but once that trust has been breached, it is difficult to repair.

- To maintain respectful relationships with other clinicians- Your colleagues often have very definite opinions about what is ethical, often enshrined in various codes of ethics of the profession or learned from mentors. Those codes and ethics role-modeling are created by people who practice some form of ethical decision-making.

- To maintain some efficiency- Although ethical decision-making often requires extra time, it also can save time by anticipating disagreements that can slow down the care process. If you aren't ethical, patients or other caregivers who are upset with your decisions can seriously impede your work.

- To reduce burnout- One cause of burnout is incongruence between physicians' personal values and those of their organization. Physicians who can describe their ethical concerns and use negotiating skills may be able to change the organizational policies that produce burnout.