A question for RNs?!
Question: To be a Registered Nurse did you take any kind of oath that you had to always have the patient's best interest first? Such as if you work in a nursing home and knew what you were told to do or say was not in the best interest of the client would you follow the orders of the administration and lie to the family or would you stand up for the client and tell the family what would be the healthiest procedure for the client and risk loosing your job by going against what the administration told you to do? Remember....you know that the administration is not making the best choice for the client and you know this.
Answers: To be a Registered Nurse did you take any kind of oath that you had to always have the patient's best interest first? Such as if you work in a nursing home and knew what you were told to do or say was not in the best interest of the client would you follow the orders of the administration and lie to the family or would you stand up for the client and tell the family what would be the healthiest procedure for the client and risk loosing your job by going against what the administration told you to do? Remember....you know that the administration is not making the best choice for the client and you know this.
Our oath states we will do patients no harm.If you are given an order and your nursing judgement tells you that this is unsafe for patient,then you have an obligation to do what is right for your patient .Dr can make mstakes.I would not do anything that i felt was unsafe for my patients.
As a nurse in the Nurse Pratice Act and in the Nightengale Pledge we must stand up for our patients! You cannot tell a family what is the healthiest procedure, you can advise them that they need to speak to the doctor and may give suggestions on what the doctor could be ask.
I'm British and we are bound by the Nursing and Midwifery Council's code of professional conduct, where we can lose our licences if we do something that we know to not be in the best interests of the patient. We are required to act as advocate for the patient and challenge anybody that does something or tries to do something against the patient's wishes. We are also required to ensure that the patient is aware of all their options and let them make the decision.
We have no more right to make a decision than administration does. We can only discuss with the patient all of their options and what possible outcomes each one has. If the patient is mentally or physically unable to make that decision, the family can then step in and make it for them.
Personally, if i believed the admin people were witholding information, I would inform them that I was professionally bound to discuss this with the family as I could lose my licence if i didn't. I would not, however, give my opinion on what was best for the patient, as it would be his or her own decision to make.
In the UK, the professional body for registered nurses is the Nursing and Midwifery council. (NMC).
Any registered nurse must adhere to the NMC's Code of Professional Conduct: Standards for conduct, performance and ethics.
A broad outline of the code is:
respect the patient or client as an individual
obtain consent before you give any treatment or care
protect confidential information
co-operate with others in the team
maintain your professional knowledge and competence
be trustworthy
act to identify and minimise risk to patients and clients.
There is further information in the code itself on what is meant by each of these headings.
Any nurse who is seen to have broken this code will be called to account before the NMC and may be stripped of her professional qualification, meaning she can no longer practice.
A major role of the nurse is to act as an advocate for the patient, to treat them as an individual and to respect the patients dignity. Failure to uphold this role could be seen as breach of the code and is taken very seriously.
Acting in the role of patient advocate the nurse should discuss the situation with the team, and ensure that risks and benefits were made very clear to the patient. This might not necessarily involve the patient's family, issues of confidentiality are involved there too.