Licensed nursing professionals share accountability and responsibility with their employers to enhance safety in nursing care. When nurses are faced with uncertainty, they explore other options to maintain patients’ safety. Only licensed nurses are allowed to exercise nursing and delegate nursing care. Whenever nurses work beyond their competencies or fail to hold accepted standards of practice, they can be at risk of disciplinary action (“Maryland nurses foundation,” n.d). Although nurses are expected to exhibit medical proficiency, when the competence of nurses handling a particular case is questionable, they risk facing revocation, suspension, probation, fines, reprimand, or even dismissal.
Nurses must observe legal issues that govern the extent of their care delivery and ensure that they do not offer services behold such provisions. For instance, they should refrain from accepting professional responsibilities beyond the license requirements, performing without enough supervision, which is authorized by the license, except for emergencies, neglecting to supervise persons who are expected to practice only under supervision of that licensed professional, and abandoning a patient in need of nursing services and not arranging for continued care (WVRN, 2010). Hence, such legal provisions should be observed by practicing nurses during care provision.
Nursing professionals face malpractice cases if they fail to follow the legal requirements when accepting and delegating duties. Therefore, malpractice insurance assists in covering possible legal costs for such suits while patients bear the costs through service charges. Finkeiman (2019) suggests that nursing superiors should exhibit competence during supervision to enhance care delivery and minimize legal implications. Hence, to reduce healthcare care costs, nurse leaders should supervise and allocate duties to nurses to mitigate the probability of facing legal suits.
Some of the ethical requirements of a nurse include accountability and responsibility for personal nursing actions and judgments. Besides, a nurse should use informed decisions as well as apply personal qualifications and competences when accepting and delegating activities to other nursing staff (“Maryland nurses foundation,” n.d). Overall, nurses should observe ethical requirements governing their careers and apply moral principles when accepting or delegating assignments.
References
Finkelman Anita. (2019). Professional nursing concepts: Competencies for quality leadership, 4th ed. Burlington: Jones and Bartlett Learning.
Maryland Nurses Foundation (N.d). Giving, accepting or rejecting a work assignment. Retrieved from: http://www.mbon.org/Documents/assignments.pdf
West Virginia Board of Examiners for Registered Nurses. (2010). Accepting and rejecting an assignment: A guide for nurses. Retrieved from https://wvrnboard.wv.gov/forms/Documents/Accepting.Rejecting.an.Assignment%20Final.pdf