Consent Case Study Essay

Treatment without consent - Charlotte, the nurse on duty, had forced James into getting the injections therefore causing him emotional distress. Treating a competent patient who has validly refused treatment could constitute an assault or battery. The legal provisions supporting a competent patients’ right to refuse treatment in Australia can be found in both legislation throughout all the States and common law. The Australian Charter of Healthcare Rights is also a helpful source of guidance as it reinforces the common law position that is based upon the principle of patient autonomy. The High Court of Australia first articulated the principle or refusal of treatment in Marion’s case, stating that a legally competent person has a right “to choose what occurs with respect to his or her own person.” Under the NSW Health Patient Charter, consent in regard to an operation, procedure or treatment is both a specific legal requirement and an accepted part of good medical practice. Medical practitioners are also expected to clearly explain proposed treatment, and adequately inform their patients on significant risks and alternatives associated with the treatment.Failure to do this could result in legal action for assault and battery against a practitioner who performs the procedure. Charlotte made no effort to explain or gain a consent from James.

There are a number of legal and ethical duties expected of nurses. Most of these involve care for patient’s autonomy and confidentiality despite the medical care. Failure to act regarding these can give rise to liability. One aspect of Patient’s autonomy involves giving or withholding his consent about treatment. This paper takes into account ‘consent’ as the aspect of law regarding nursing.

February 2010 This is a companion document to the Codes of Ethics and Professional Conduct for Nurses

Informed consent is the basis for all legal and moral aspects of a patient’s autonomy. Implied consent is when you and your physician interact in which the consent is assumed, such as in a physical exam by your doctor. Written consent is a more extensive form in which it mostly applies when there is testing or experiments involved over a period of time. The long process is making sure the patient properly understands the risk and benefits that could possible happen during and after the treatment. As a physician, he must respect the patient’s autonomy. For a patient to be an autonomous agent, he must have legitimate moral values. The patient has all the rights to his medical health and conditions that arise. When considering informed

A nurse is given an opportunity to help patients, either if its by helping them through a very serious sickness or just helping a patient get to the bathroom on time, or a time when happiness is overfilling the room and a child is being born. Registered nurses provide a wide variety of patient care services (Mitchell, p.12). A Nurse must always know where to begin and where to stop, as any other career in the health field there is always something that cannot be done by everyone but only the certified person, a nurse must always remain inside her scope of practice to prevent any misunderstandings. A nurse must also follow a code of ethics , the code of ethics of the American Association of Medical Assistants states that a nurse should at all times render service with full respect and dignity of humanity, respect confidential information obtained by a patients file, uphold the honor and high principles the profession and accept its discipline, and last but not least always want to improve her services to better serve the health and well being of the community. (Mitchell, p.65).

In this assignment I will be discussing Adult Nursing and Mental Health Nursing and issues regarding consent. Consent is important within all fields of nursing as it is essential to conduct any medical procedures. The Nursing and Midwifery Council Code of Conduct (NMC,2008) states that all healthcare professionals must presume that all patients have the mental capacity to accept or deny medical treatments after being given all information which may be needed. However there may be some instances where consent cannot be obtained. An example of this is if the patient is in a medical emergency and may be unconscious or if the patient lacks the mental capacity to make a knowledgeable choice. In this situation treatment would be

Nurses have a responsibility to provide safe, quality and competent nursing care and are therefore expected to conduct themselves personally and professionally in accordance with the code of conducts established by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia. The Code of professional Conduct as well as the Code of Ethics for Nurses in Australia together provide a quality framework of professional practice for Nurses, outlining a set of minimum standards Registered Nurses are expected to maintain (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, 2010). Unprofessional conduct is defined as “conduct that is contrary to the accepted and agreed practice standards of the profession” (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, 2010). In the video “Crossing

Nurses have a professional responsibility to ensure that safe boundaries are kept in the relationship between patient and Nurse. It is these boundaries that provide the nursing profession with integrity, and according to Baca (2010, pp.195) it is essential these boundaries be maintained because of the difference in power between the nurse and patient. However, boundary violations can occur, when a nurse crosses from the zone of helpfulness to over involved, the ANMC (2011 pp.3) believes that when a violation occurs a nurse is behaving unprofessional manner and misusing their power in the patient nurse relationship. This misuse of power can be categorized into 3 types; boundary crossing, boundary violation and the extreme form of sexual misconduct. Often by mistake a nurse could cross the boundary without thought, a

As healthcare providers, maintaining a patient’s confidentiality, human dignity and privacy is expected at all times. Nurses are faced with maintaining patient confidentiality on a daily basis. The Coded of Ethics for Nurses is the framework of nonnegotiable ethical standards and obligations that all nurses are to uphold. Nurses are to be accountable for their actions and are expected to advocate and strive to protect the rights, health and safety of patients (American Nurses Association, 2011).

Consensual sex in is a complicated and serious issue that affects college campuses throughout the United States. On September 18th, 2014, the Governor of California, Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill No. 967 and with it, established a new standard and definition of consent. California is the first state to pass an affirmative consent law for its universities (Grinberg 2014). The law mandates that public universities, community college districts and private colleges that receive state resources for student financial aid to incorporate affirmative-consent language into their sexual-assault policies. Furthermore, the law stipulates that all students attending the colleges and universities must seek “affirmative consent” before engaging in sexual activity. The law reads that consent must be “ongoing through a sexual activity” and “lack of protest or silence” does not mean that consent is given (SB-967 “Student safety: sexual assault”, 2014)

Nurses are subject to a plethora of legal, ethical, and professional duties which can be very challenging on a day to day basis. Some of these duties include respecting a patient 's confidentiality and autonomy, and to recognize the duty of care that is owed to all patients. As nurses our duties are always professional; however there are legal implications if these duties are breached. We also must consider when it is okay as nurses to breach these duties and therefore ethical issues arise. As nurses one of our main priorities is to advocate for our patients, without our own personal feelings on the matter taking over.

Codes of ethics contain a coherent set of normative principles underlying a nurse’s purpose and associated values (Vanlaere and Gastmans, 2007). Two perspectives of ethics are the ethics of justice and the ethics of care (Botes, 2000). The ethics of justice constitutes an ethical perspective in terms of which ethical decisions are made on the basis of universal principles and rules, and in an impartial and verifiable manner with a view to ensuring the fair and equitable treatment of all people (Botes, 2000). The ethics of care, on the other hand, constitutes an ethical approach in terms of which involvement, harmonious relations and the needs of others play an important part in ethical decision making in each ethical situation (Botes, 2000).

Consent can be quite tricky, a legal minefield for healthcare teams, this is due to the patients who will give or refuse to give private information about themselves who is legally competent but

Further, it is used to protect nurses by identifying inappropriate or unsafe actions that may put the individual nurse, the patient and/or the significant others supporting the patient at risk. Each individual act provides the legal parameters for the practice of professional nursing in that jurisdiction, and has been developed to safeguard the public from care by unqualified practitioners. It is essential that all Nurses are familiar with the Nurse Practice Act in their state of employment and that ethical decisions have legal ramifications. Breaches of the act may result in disciplinary action by supervising nursing staff, reporting to the nursing board and possible deregistration.

Unlike most of the cases discussed in this article, the next important case to the development of DWI implied-consent law, Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Ass’n, was not a criminal case, but a civil one. In that case, the Railway Labor Executives’ Association (hereafter “RLEA”), brought suit to challenge certain regulations promulgated by the Federal Railroad Administration (hereafter “FRA”). The challenged regulations required railroad companies to take blood and urine tests from certain employees after major accidents (part C of the act), and authorized railroads to administer breath or urine tests to employees who violated certain safety rules (part D of the act).