The Legal Aspects of Nursing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Legal Aspects of Nursing - Essay Example This can be attributed to the development of advanced technologies, of the changing societies, as well as the increasing complexities not just of the nursing field but of medicine in general (White, 2001). Aside from creating non-legal binding rules and regulations such as standard operating procedures to be followed while giving services to clients or patients, nurses are also made to abide by legal binding contracts that would penalize them should they break any rules of conduct as specified. Such contracts or laws are made in order to prevent the nurses from committing crimes such as avoiding their responsibilities and duties to patients, or in the other extreme end, of overstepping their boundaries in the name of attending to their responsibilities as providers of patient care (White, 2001). Thus, in order to maintain order and at the same time enforce the adherence to specified rules and regulations in nursing, several laws were enacted to maintain an orderly conduct among membe rs of the nursing field, as well as to allow them to become penalized as necessary in the event that they were found guilty of committing crimes in relation to their line of work based on existing and applicable criminal laws. In the case study concerning the death of34-year-old Jorge Fernandez, the legal aspects of nursing are integral to provide a strong case against the medical personnel involved. In this case, Jorge Fernandez’s wife is the plaintiff since she is the one that was able to do so, as her husband had died due to the negligence of both the ER doctor and the nurse in duty. The ER doctor and the nurse assigned to Mr. Fernandez are the defendants, as the plaintiff sees that their negligence of the patient caused his death. Since negligence is considered to be an unintentional tort, it is punishable under the civil tort law and will be tried through civil litigation in a civil court (White, 2001). The two defendants could possible face charges of medical negligence.