Learn — Nursing process, communication & records

1 note · 11 questions on the topic

Code of ethics — ICN/INC

A code of ethics is the profession's own public statement of the standards of conduct expected of every nurse, written by the profession rather than imposed by an employer, and it is what a nurse is judged against when the law is silent. It matters at the bedside because it gives the nurse the ground to stand on when she must respect a refusal she disagrees with, protect information she has been asked to share, or question an instruction she believes will harm the patient.

The ICN Code of Ethics for Nurses, in its 2021 revision, is arranged under four elements: nurses and patients or other people requiring care or services, nurses and practice, nurses and the profession, and nurses and global health; the older wording of the fourth element was nurses and co-workers, and both versions appear in question papers.
The ICN names four fundamental responsibilities of the nurse: to promote health, to prevent illness, to restore health and to alleviate suffering and promote a dignified death, with respect for human rights inherent in nursing and care given without discrimination of age, colour, culture, ethnicity, disability or illness, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, politics, language, race, religious or spiritual beliefs, legal, economic or social status.
The Indian Nursing Council publishes both a Code of Ethics and a Code of Professional Conduct: the nurse respects the patient's rights, values, customs and spiritual beliefs, maintains confidentiality, keeps her competence current, is personally accountable for her own judgement and actions, and does not delegate what the person she delegates to cannot safely do.
The working principles are autonomy (the competent patient decides), beneficence (act for the patient's good), non-maleficence (do no harm), justice (treat like cases alike and share scarce resources fairly), veracity (tell the truth), fidelity (keep promises) and confidentiality (guard what you learn).
Valid informed consent needs a competent adult, given voluntarily, after disclosure of the nature, benefits, risks and alternatives in a language he understands; in India an adult of 18 years and over consents for himself, a parent or guardian consents for a minor, and life-saving emergency treatment may proceed under the doctrine of necessity when consent cannot be obtained.
Confidentiality is strong but not absolute: it yields to a court order, to the notification of a notifiable disease, and where there is a duty to warn an identifiable person at serious risk; sharing a patient's details on social media or a personal phone is a breach even when no name is used.
Advocacy is a duty, not an option: a nurse who believes an order is unsafe questions it before carrying it out, escalates it in writing to the next level, and records what she did, because carrying out an obviously wrong order does not transfer the accountability to the prescriber.
Ethics and law overlap but are not the same: an act can be lawful and still unethical, and a genuine ethical dilemma is one in which two defensible principles conflict, which is why the answer is a structured discussion with the patient, the family and the ethics committee rather than a unilateral decision.

Free today: the 10-question daily quiz · the NORCET 11 recall paper · what ₹999 unlocks — once, no auto-renewal.