Employee Accountability In Nursing

American Nurses Association (ANA) Code of Ethics with Interpretive Statements, provision 1 states, “the nurse, in all professional relationships, practices with compassion and respect for the inherent dignity, worth, and uniqueness of every individual, unrestricted by consideration of social or economic status, personal attributes, or the nature of health problems” "(About Code of Ethics," 2017). In order to provide quality care to the homeless population, the community health nurse is challenged to put aside her own preconceived opinions about drug addiction, alcohol abuse, mental illness and the assumed unwillingness to care for oneself. “While trying to help clients negotiate ‘the system’ the professionals may face a client’s noncompliance with medical regimes, drug abuse, and even stealing or selling medical resources” (Hunter, 1993, p. 139).

When you are charge nurse/team leader, making assignments is pure delegation. For example, I worked with Nurse M. and she was amazing when it came to taking care of patients who were confused, cantankerous, or agitated. She always seemed to know the right thing to say, in the right tone, and she had a way of establishing mutual goals and expectations. Most of the time, at the end of her shift, the patient would be calmer, relaxed and more willing to work with the nurses.

According to Rachel (2012) “accountability is at the heart of nursing, weaving its way through nursing practice in all settings and at all levels” (para. 1). Accountability builds the individual and organizational credibility by clearly setting the expectations, goals, and commitments. As a nurse, I am committed to growing and advance in my knowledge and skills, adhere to the nursing standards and ethics, involve in professional associations, and attain any certifications needed for my practice. In personal growth and development area, I would rate myself in between the competent and expert level, since I am on track in implementing my action plans to advance my education, keep up with continued education credits required, have a plan for my

Depending on the ANA Code of Ethics, nurses are often a lot of ethical dilemmas these days, informed consent of the patient for the right to refuse treatment, length of life versus quality of life, euthanasia passive versus active euthanasia, for use of adult stem cells compared to the use of embryonic stem cells and maintaining the treatment process versus withdrawing treatment. Patients, family members, and the successful resolution of internal multi-disciplinary skills of nurses and health care professionals to collaborate in this dilemma can affect the quality of care.

Shared governance is an innovative model used to provide direction for the professional practice of nursing. This model is used to direct nurses to participate in unit-based decision making that allow nurses to demonstrate accountability and ownership for their practices. The goal of the model is to improve quality patient care contain costs, and retain nursing staff. According to Marquis and Houston (2012), “In shared governance, the organization’s governance is shared among board members, nurses, physicians, and management” (p. 270-271). Shared governance is imperative in the healthcare institutions. “Shared governance, which gives nurses control over their professional practices, is an essential element of a professional practice nursing model, providing structure and context for health care delivery” (cite shared governance article). This allows each healthcare worker to have a voice in the decision making and encourage input that will expand the business and healthcare.

Whistleblowing is the disclosure by a former or current staff member in the organisation of illegal, immoral or illegitimate practices, policies or person that may wrong or harm a third party (Mansbach & Bachner, 2010).

Delegation is considered to be among the most involved nursing skills which require a nurse to apply knowledgeable clinical judgment and accountability during patient care. RNs have an obligation to finding what is needed for patients and families and then using the appropriate delegation to staff to help carry out the plan. This helps maximize on achieving the most desired outcomes and also maximize the use of available resources. The only way to help RNs maximize the available resources is through improving their delegation skills. If a nurse is to be delegated a task, it should be within their scope of nursing and also be tasks they are qualified to perform. If a nurse is not qualified then the work should be

Nursing has come a long way from being the hand maidens of the physician to having control over nursing knowledge and practice. It now has two essential ingredients of accountability and autonomy. There is more demand from the nurses now than in the past when all they were expected to do was just to provide comfort and care. They were just meant to assist the physician during treatment, assist in the patients personal hygiene administer medication that is prescribed by the physician and dress wounds. These were just things that any woman could do. Nursing demands much more now as they are educators, client advocate, and managers. More so it is a requisite for any field of endeavour to attain professional status, it is actually an attribute of a profession.

Negligence is conduct that falls below the standards of behaviour established by law for the protection of others against unreasonable risk of harm.

Ethical drift is when an individual, groups or organization start acting against of ethical behavior. (Kleinman, 2006). Ethical drift may occur gradually and without premeditated consciousness. It may occur unconsciously without people realizing that they have changed their formal ethical standards, (Kleinman, 2006). I have observed ethical drift occurring in the insurance sector where a chronic patient paid some amount of money to an insurance broker's account to get life insurance for the same premium as healthy persons. The strategy that could have addressed the ethical drift mentioned in this analysis is recognizing the need for change and maintaining a vigilant awareness of professional boundaries (Kleinman,

D-The patient arrived on time for her session and informed this writer that she has decided to remain with the clinic as she learned on her own that no detox facility will accept her because she is testing negative and currently on methadone. The patient further mentioned that she is questioning as to whether or not her sister and her mother would help her as they said they would; however, the patient had a moment and looked back when her family did not help her as she struggled with her children. Furthermore, the patient reports, her sister did not give her the $80.00 for her rent. The patient reports that she had asked some guy for assistance. This writer addressed with the patient about her employment status and money management. The patient

Definitions of accountability were scrutinized before being utilised. In order for someone to be accountable they must have the ability to perform the task, accept the responsibility

As a registered nurse, we face ethical issues every day. Some days we understand the clear cut ethical issue at hand; however, other ethical issues can be disguised. In my year and half of being an RN I have come across many ethical issues. As mentioned before, some are clear cut and others are hard to tread through. Initially, these ethical issues can make you question your job; however, after some reflection I believe these issues make us stronger nurses.

perform a selected nursing task or activity in a selected patient situation that is within the job

I know that in my 25+ years of nursing there have been many issues that have involved one issue or another involving ethics of some sort, but probably the freshest in my mind has to be the one presented a few weeks ago. We had a patient on my unit (step-down) that came in nearly unresponsive from home that was a 78 year old male. Family states "they found him like this. He did have multiple health issues such as chronic renal failure on hemodialysis three times a week that he had missed for a week, congestive heart failure, atrial fib (controlled), diabetes, history of CVA x2, c-diff on admission that the family states that he had off and on a few months, so mostly a very sick patient to say the least. He was worked up from head to toe and showed no signs of another CVA, his A1C was good, BNP for his CHF was really not too bad.