Nursing practices are growing to accommodate the new demands of patient and the public for modern primary care services. The essence of Nursing practice requires a continuous evaluation of the ethical duties while providing the patient care. Ethics is the process of decisions based on moral beliefs. Morals are one’s sense of good and bad, right or wrong. Ethical duties may or may not be based on correlate with the law, or set of enforceable principles and or rules established to protect the society.
However, it has not always been easy for practices to make the most effective use of skills of the nurse members of their teams. Nursing is a highly respectable profession, although there are times that nurses commit violations. According to Nevada State Board of Nursing (2004) the common types of violations a nurse might commit were as follows: ? Practice Beyond Scope ? Negligence Abuse, exploitation ? Fraudulent application (e. g.
failing to report criminal conviction or previous disciplinary action) ? Problems with drugs and/or alcohol which results in impaired practice ? Incompetence ? Criminal conviction related to the qualification, functions and duties of a nurse. The American Nurses Association (ANA) has been active in initiatives that seek to enhance patient safety and reduce the risk of error. ANA has long been concerned with the effect of systems-related issues, such as inadequate staffing, on patient outcomes.
It has also identified a need to move away from a “blame” atmosphere in health care. Nursing has an interest in working to reduce health care error, and its participation in collaborative efforts to identify and reduce error will be important. Nursing will also need to identify systems-related issues on which consensus and full collaboration may be less readily achievable, such as staffing and whistle-blower protection. (Nursing Trend and Issue. 1998)