Nursing Student..essay!

FionaDikkenberg

Hi,
I am a final year student nurse, today i got a 2000 word assigment:

"critically discuss the relevance of law in contemporary nursing",

one has to draw on clinical examples, court cases relevant to ireland etc. I dont really know where to begin. i want to look at the issue of informed consent concerning minors perhaps? i think we are free to pick whatever subjects we want really, such as clinical negligence, consent, confidentiality etc.
can anybody give me some ideas please? i usually do well in assignments and most of the time i have no trouble drawing up plans etc but this one is proving to be extremely difficult
I would really appreciate opinions. Thanks

etymon

Hi there,

In general you want to look at medical negligence which is within the branch of Tort (or 'Civil Wrongs') Law... McMahon & Binchy have the best text with a great section on professional negligence and the caselaw to go with it.
Deirdre Madden also has a good text (although a bit waffly, but better suited to essays if you are not a lawyer) which is called 'Medicine, Negligence and the Law' or something. Any college library will have them.
She also writes in journals (maybe search www.imt.ie for articles?) on these issues.
For recent cases, why not try www.courts.ie and the judgment database? Generally where the name of a case is 'A vs. B' your medical negligence ones will be 'A' or 'A, a minor suing by his next friend...' vs. The HSE, Dr. X, The Trustees of X Hospital and you can spot the med neg cases quite quickly. There have not been huge changes to the basic principles as outlined in McMahon & Binchy but are good from a topical point of view.
Good luck! Remember with any essay like that to keep it topical and predict future predicaments that may fall between the gaps of the current law in place.

drkpower

2000 words - tough to do justice to that topic within such a tight word count. You could write a 100,000 thesis on that topic and still be leaving out stuff.

I think you need to keep it practical and focussed to contemporary nursing practice, as opposed to medical negligence principles in general. Issues such as informed consent are primarily issues for doctors and I would leave it out. 4000 words willl be gone before you have explained the basics of medical law so I would be inclined to focis on one particular aspect of the area.

And the bit that sticks out is the contemporary bit; so perhaps you could include a significant section on the changing role of nursing/midwifery and the legal implications of same - the new role of nurse practitioners and nursing prescribing is a big area and I would focus on this area and how this brings nurses more into the firing line of medical negligence and how that role and responsibility should be addressed (ie. importance of risk management/prevention, protocols on prescribing etc, training and regular review/audit of practice). Going in detail into case law will eat up the words but dont ever do a topic in this area without mentioning Dunne v National Maternity H, the key case in clinical negligence.

There is plenty of other stuff that you could go into. Remember that this is an essay from a clinical perspective rather than a legal one. What they will want to see is that you understand the relevance of law to clinical practice rather than an essay on what the law says. So focus on how the law affects practice; what can you do to avoid litigation? (clear and detailed precise documentation; communication with patients; early reporting to superiors and patients where there is an adverse clinical incident).

Hope thats food for thought!

Dr Galen

pretty much what drkpower said tbh.

I had a very similar essay in my final year, and I looked at how the law affected the emerging and expanded roles of the nurse. Talked a bit about things like CNS/ANP in emergency depts, and the nurse prescribing route would take nurses into a whole new minefield of medico-legal stuff.

Good luck

FionaDikkenberg

Thanks for the replies, they were very helpful. i am going to do it on the expanding role of the nurse, as it is most relevant to me, i am going to add in a few bits on self determination etc. Does anyone know if there have been any cases r.e. negligence against nurse prescribers/anp's etc in the irish setting? thanks again for all the info

Mystik Monkey wrote: »

pretty much what drkpower said tbh.

I had a very similar essay in my final year, and I looked at how the law affected the emerging and expanded roles of the nurse. Talked a bit about things like CNS/ANP in emergency depts, and the nurse prescribing route would take nurses into a whole new minefield of medico-legal stuff.

Good luck

Dr Galen

not that I'm aware of. Nurse prescribing hasn't been around that long and is pretty strictly controlled so we'd have heard of something I guess