Healthcare professionals, patients, and families face ethical and legal decisions daily that require immediate and strict action and response. Decision making for patients who are not able to do so is one of the tough decisions that families and healthcare professionals have to make daily (Jiménez et al., 2019). To be able to take the right action and respond correctly, some legal laws are taken into considerations. Civil, criminals, administrative, and constitutional laws are examples of rules that are present in a health care setting.
Civil laws and criminal laws are the most common laws that are applied to professional nursing. Civil and criminal acts in the nursing profession are to be followed, and if not, needed punishment should be given to the individual not preserving the laws. Therefore nurse managers are supposed to be aware of crimes and situations that may subject a nurse to criminal prosecution. Awareness of conditions that subject nurses to criminal prosecution enables nurses to educate themselves and avoid such punishments. An example of a criminal case is the prosecution for violating the provisions of the Nurse Practice Act as these laws are purposed to outline offenses that go against public welfare. Civil laws are purposed to protect civil rights like freedom on the privacy invasion, an example being nurse charged with invasion of privacy and violation of confidentiality laws.
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An example of a civil law that has been depicting if from a healthcare setting where a nurse threatened a patient through death id she did not do what the nurses ordered her. Freedom from threats and injury of the patient was violated by the nurse, thus committing a civil law (Marylyn, 2018). A patient had received breast reconstruction, therefore, undergoing major chest surgery. By the nurse ordering the patient to get up and start walking after the operation made the patient feel like her rights were violated. Moreover, the nurse threatened her with death if she did not do what the nurse wanted hence the patient’s freedom from injury and threats were violated. In this case, the nurse has to be punished for violating the civil laws of the patient.
References
Jiménez V., Geovana A., Márquez N., & Juliana. (2019). Legal review of the civil, criminal, and administrative consequences of informed consent violation in medical practice. Colombian Journal of Anesthesiology, 47 (2), 107-112
Marylyn. (2018). Ethical issues. American Journal of Nursing, 118 (3), 10
