Ethical Frameworks

Ethical and Legal Frameworks in Nursing

Nurses are the professionals who take care of patients. They are responsible for the ill person’s physical and moral well-being. Although the field of nursing is sometimes underappreciated, these professionals are responsible for preserving human lives. Their professional and even personal actions are regulated by a wide range of rules established by organizations, governmental bodies, and society. This essay will compare and contrast ethical and legal frameworks in nursing.

Professional Behavior According to the Rules of Ethics

First, it is necessary to describe what nurses have to and what they should not do according to the law and ethical rules. The ethical dimension of the professional behavior is

Today there are a lot of rules that protect the patients’ rights, unlike the ethical rules that attend to how patients should be treated. Ethical rules remain untouched but laws are constantly amended and the new ones are explained. Most state regulations create the standards for the knowledge and skills nurses must have in order to effectively perform their duties. They provide requirements for licensing, protection of patient’s rights, defining the limits of the safe nursing practice, and describe the penalty professionals have to carry in cases when they break the law (Hodgson, 2013). So typically laws define strict professional standards.

The law that regulates nursing practice at the federal level is called the Nurse Practice Act (NPA), and it is enacted in all states (National Council of State Boards of Nursing, n. d.). The bodies that controls its professional activities are called the Boards of Nursing and are established in each state of the United States. They work on developing the laws and making them more specific and state rules and regulations must be followed in accordance with the NPA. The laws concerning nursing professional behavior are adopted both at the federal and state

For example, the Code of Ethics for Nurses is the same for all nurses everywhere whereas laws dealing with medical practice may be different between states. Also, breaking the law leads to worse consequences than not observing the code of ethics. Let's say a nurse talks to a patient in a rude manner, the patient then gets upset. If a nurse does not give the prescribed medication to the ill person on time, they may get worse or even die. However, neglecting ethical rules may grow into breaking the law. The nurses who behave negligently and who do not develop as professionals may hurt the people they take care of physically. Consequently, breaking the law is followed by the more serious punishment than the one that follows neglecting the code of ethics. The medical practitioner who commits crime at the workplace may be deprived of their license or even go to jail. If a nurse behaves improperly from the point of view of ethics, the worst thing that might happen to them is losing their job and their future career is sometimes rarely