Law, Ethics &Accountability for Nurses Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Law, Ethics &Accountability for Nurses - Essay ExampleThis study is being conducted in order to comprehensively explain the legal and ethical issues which nurses often encounter and the possible ways that such issues bathroom be legally and ethically resolved.In the first scenario, a nurse decided independently to indicate in the chart of an 80 year old end-stage heart failure patient that the latter is classified as not-for-resuscitation or NFR. The NFR order was not consulted with the patients doctor. Moreover, since the patient was too ill to express her concur or dissent to the order, her husbands consent was secured. The nurse recorded in the patients chart that the on-call physician approved the NFR order. The physician also apparently agreed to the discontinuance of the patients continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine. The following day, the patient died and the cause of death was not the withdrawal of the CPAP but because of a heart attack. The RN was later(pren ominal) fired for disregarding the chart orders which indicated that the patients medical treatment should be continued.The relevant legal and professional issues in the above case can be broken down to a) the RNs independent decision on the NFR decision with divulge proper consultation with the patients physician and in violation of orders indicated in the patients chart and in b) ordering the withdrawal of the treatment without proper consultation with the patient.First and foremost, NFR orders are decisions and orders which are indicated in patients charts by the patients doctor. It cannot be independently decided upon by the nurse without proper consultation with the physician. In turn, this decision is make by the physician after proper consultation with the patient (Dames Clinical Nursing Education Site, 2010). The function of a nurse in NFR orders is to carry it out and to follow the directive as indicated in the patients chart. In the current case, the nurse independently d ecided that an NFR