ASPEN N520 Legal and Ethical Issues in Health Care Module 8 Assignment
Among various stakeholders, the registered nurse must incorporate legal and ethical theories and principles into practice. There is a need to evaluate the legal and ethical considerations that exist in healthcare today, to assess nursing’s role in health initiatives, and to find ways that we can help improve health and health outcomes. This presentation will help nurses recognize and respond to dilemmas within diverse health care settings and nursing roles. This presentation will provide an overview of regulatory action and the legislative and judicial processes, enabling nurses to become familiar with changes affecting the health care system such as patient rights, technological advances, and managed care.
This presentation will examine the role of the nurse as a health professional, advocate, and leader:
Select five legal or ethical concepts that you feel influence nursing practice.
Explain the selected concepts regarding both the impact on agency viability and quality patient care.
Review the selected concepts and strategically analyze for priorities, challenges, and issues from a legal and ethical perspective.
Identify instances of actions taken by an agency or provider that would or could violate the ethical duties and responsibilities of the health care providers or the rights of patients.
Develop a policy proposal, measures, and recommendations for prevention of legal and ethical violations.
Detail how nursing could intervene or advocate to incorporate legal and ethical theories and principles more effectively into practice.
This PowerPoint® (Microsoft Office) or Impress® (Open Office) presentation should be a minimum of 20 slides, including a title, introduction, conclusion and reference slide, with detailed speaker notes and recorded audio comments for all content slides. Use at least four scholarly sources and make certain to review the module’s Signature Assignment Rubric before starting your presentation. This presentation is worth 400 points for quality content and presentation.
Legal and Ethical Considerations for Group and Family Therapy
Psychotherapy allows one to assist people to modify their behaviors, emotions, and cognitions. The therapy is applied to both individuals and groups a factor that raises legal and ethical issues. The considerations revolve around competency to practice, confidentiality, and informed consent (Sanghvi & Pandey, 2019). Individual therapy is handled with ease because confidentiality is easily maintained, one offers one-on-one attention, intense and comprehensive analysis and treatment can be executed, therapy is tailored to the specific client, the therapeutic alliance is strong and feedback is easily obtained. Additionally, informed consent is easily obtained. On the other hand, group therapy is complex because the client is not the main focus, level of confidentiality is less secure, the therapeutic alliance is broader and therapy cannot be fit into one’s personal schedule. Obtaining informed consent in group therapy is complex since one deals with people across circumstances and ages (Cooper, Hudson, Kranzberg & Motherwell, 2017). Consequently, groups result in multiple alliances that complicate the ability to maintain neutrality and handle dual relationships. Nevertheless, both therapies require a competent therapist as a way of promoting beneficence or doing good.
The above mentioned ethical and legal considerations obfuscate therapeutic approaches used in family and group therapy. Family therapy, for instance, handles complex relationship issues and requires core training in areas like infidelity, sexual concerns, and family law among others (Hecker & Murphy, 2018). The therapist should, therefore, be competent in these areas to avoid a breach in the duty of care. The therapist is also required to adopt thoroughly informed consent procedures as a measure to ensure that all parties in the group comprehend their roles, responsibility, and confidentiality limits (Cooper et al., 2017). Group therapy may corner a therapist to silence or compromise for a promise made in good faith. The therapist therefore should know when to take a position and assert whether sessions will continue with those who attend or everyone must attend the sessions.
References
Cooper, E. J., Hudson, J. S., Kranzberg, M. B., & Motherwell, L. (2017). Current and future challenges in group therapy. International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 67(sup1), S219-S239.
Hecker, L. L., & Murphy, M. J. (2018). 12 Ethical Issues in Couple and Family Therapy. The Cambridge Handbook of Applied Psychological Ethics, 239.
Sanghvi, P., & Pandey, S. (2019). Ethical and Legal Constraints in Psychotherapy. Journal of Psychosocial Research, 14(1).
The health care provision highly depends on clinical judgment and decision, which are often marred with controversies. As such, the practicum experience this week on ethical considerations in health care was critical in creating awareness that a nurse must always be guided by ethical standards when providing care. The fundamental ethical principles in health care include justice, autonomy, non-maleficence, and beneficence (Haddad & Geiger, 2018). These principles are critical in dealing with rampant ethical challenges in health care system and allowing nurses to involve their patients in their care process. I have realized that nurses often faced with different ethical barriers when making clinical judgment and decisions (Clark, 2017). For instance, nurses sometimes struggle with situations where they either need to be honest or withhold medical information from the ailing patient and their families to protect their emotions. Moreover, do-not-resuscitate order poses great ethical challenges to nurses where they face dilemma on whether or not they should stop carrying out cardiopulmonary resuscitation once the heart of a patient stops beating. Other widespread ethical challenges in nursing include malpractice incidences, physician-assisted suicide, privacy and confidentiality breach, access to care, and negligence (LoBiondo-Wood & Haber, 2021).
Ethical considerations also heavily apply in nursing research. Therefore, it is important for nursing researchers to consider ethical needs when carrying out research. The common ethical considerations in nursing research include causing no harm to participants, ensuring confidentiality and privacy of participants, seeking informed consent, and ensuring voluntary participation. Taken together, nursing clinical judgments and decisions heavily depend on ethics (LoBiondo-Wood & Haber, 2021). Therefore, it is proper for nursing staff and other health care workforce to ensure greater adherence to ethical needs. Ensuring ethical requirements in clinical practice is crucial in directing the clinical practice and also having greater influence in wider health care transformation.
References
Clark, C. M. (2017). An evidence-based approach to integrate civility, professionalism, and ethical practice into nursing curricula. Nurse Educator, 42(3), 120-126. doi: 10.1097/NNE.0000000000000331
Haddad, L. M., & Geiger, R. A. (2018). Nursing ethical considerations. In: StatPearls
LoBiondo-Wood, G., & Haber, J. (2021). Nursing Research E-Book: Methods and Critical Appraisal for Evidence-Based Practice. Elsevier Health Sciences.