Duty Of Care Ethics

Duty of care plays a major role for health professionals, Duty of care follows codes and principles put into action for facilities such as hospitals via external sources such as the Government, in order achieve one core goal which is to ensure that the patient is subject to the best possible care that can be given by the facility and the Health Professionals working at the health facility. Duty of care is defined as “the obligations placed on people in a certain way, in accordance with certain standards” Royal College of Nursing (2018), making it the obligation of the health professionals to not breach their Duty of Care. If the Duty of Care is breached or Health Professionals work outside of their scope of practice, the health and wellbeing

As a Heath Professional it is your professional duty “to provide appropriate assistance, within their sphere of knowledge and competence, in such circumstances. Wherever possible, a nurse should arrange for emergency care to be accessed and provided promptly.” Royal collage of Nursing (2018). maintain an ethical and moral approach towards patients and other Health professionals. Poor morals and ethical choices are what codes such as the ‘Code of Ethics for Nursing in Australia’, the code points out eight key ethical points that look after privacy, cultural beliefs, diversity, respectfulness of the patients that the nurses are giving therapeutic care too. The code of ethics for nursing helps outline and “guide ethical decision-making and practice, and indicate to the community the human rights standards and ethical values it can expect nurses to uphold.” This does not give nurses the answers but more guides nurses in the right path for successful therapeutic

The codes and principles that have been put in place such as The Nursing Code of Ethics, are there to ensure that patients are subject to and receive the best possible care that Health Professionals can give them. If a health professional is to disregard or ignore the codes and principals, then the wellbeing of the patient is being jeopardized and the health professional has fulfilled their duty of care, as shown in ‘Assignment 3 Scenario 3’ when Sally administers the incorrect medication to Mrs Thompson after Mrs Thompson tried to tell Sally the medication was incorrect yet Sally ignored her, not showing good Patient-Centred Care. All though there were no significant negative effects with the mistake, the scenario demonstrates the incorrect procedures and low level of competency demonstrated by the nurse as she chose the “‘least said soonest mended’” and did not fill out an incident report