Instructions
Scholarly Paper #1: Legal and Ethical Issues in Nursing Leadership
Nurse leaders frequently encounter legal and ethical dilemmas. Failure to understand and act in an informed way in these areas can lead to serious legal challenges. Ensuring you are aware of your legal and ethical responsibilities and vulnerabilities as a nurse leader is important in the safety of your team as well as the patients in the clinical environment. Review and select one of the following challenges facing nurse leaders.
Staffing and scheduling issues
HIPAA regulations and state privacy laws
Workplace Violence and bullying
Substance abuse by an employee
Diversion of drugs by an employee, especially opioids
Social media usage by your staff, the patients they care for, and your institution
Professional Licensure issues
Assignment Instructions:
Select one of the issues listed and introduce the key features of the selected issue.
Identify the legal implications of each issue and the challenges nurse leaders face.
Also address the ethical perspective of the issue you choose.
Based on your review of the literature, supply examples and supporting references in discussing the issue you selected as it affects patient safety, patient outcomes, nurse safety, and organizational accountability.
Describe steps you would implement to prevent these legal vulnerabilities within your clinical environment.
All papers should be written using full APA style– in-text references and a final reference list. Papers are limited to a total of 5 pages (which include the title page, and full reference list). No less than 6 references are expected. All references must be from professional sources. The majority of all references must be primary source, research/data based (MSU library), original articles. Yoder-Wise course text, Chapter 3, must be included as one of the references in this assignment.
Legal and Ethical Issues in Nursing Leadership
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliations
Legal and Ethical Issues in Nursing Leadership
One of the key competencies that nurse leaders should possess is the ability to identify and improve factors that promote patient safety. While exploring different aspects of patient safety, nurse leaders should understand the implications of various legal and ethical issues to patient outcomes (Yoder-Wise, 2011). According to Kodivar et al. (2017), patient safety is grounded in well-defined legal and ethical imperatives. In this respect, it is important for healthcare professionals to take into account, any legal and ethical issues that might arise during their interactions with patients. Nurse leaders can overcome the legal and ethical challenges that they increasingly encounter in practice when they adequately understand their roles in promoting patient safety. The purpose of this assignment is to explore the ethical and legal issues that surround workplace violence and bullying as among the factors that affect patient safety in healthcare settings.
Workplace Violence and Bullying
Workplace violence and bullying poses a big threat to patient safety in healthcare settings. Nurse leaders should strive to create an environment where there is no violence and bullying among employees (Yoder-Wise, 2011). The initial step towards achieving this goal is understanding the key features that define workplace violence and safety. The Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety (2022) outlines the key features of workplace violence to include the presence of written or verbal threats towards employees, the use of abusive language or insults, physical attacks such as kicking and pushing, and other threatening behaviors characterized by destruction of property. Bullying in the workplace is evidenced by behaviors or verbal comments that are intended to cause psychological harm (Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety, 2022). Other key features of bullying include repeated behaviors that intimidate or humiliate others, physical abuse, criticizing others publicly, and assigning others unreasonable workloads and duties. Understanding the legal and ethical implications of workplace violence and bullying enables nurse leaders to assess their impacts and implement appropriate measures to address them.
Legal Implications and Challenges Faced by Nurse Leaders
Challenges faced by nurse leaders as they perform their roles have various legal implications. Nurse leaders may be faced with ethical and legal dilemmas in their attempt to address workplace violence and bullying. The legal implication of workplace violence and bullying is that they violate laws that have been placed to protect employees from harm (Yoder-Wise, 2011). In the United States, violence is considered to be intentional infliction of physical harm to others, and bullying is viewed as the deliberate infliction of psychological distress to others (Hebert, 2018). Nurse leaders, when evaluating the severity of the impacts caused by workplace violence and bullying, are faced with the challenge of determining the degree of physical harm and psychological distress caused to individuals (Hebert, 2018). The reason is that violence and bullying are difficult to measure which makes it difficult to establish their severities.
Ethical Perspective of Workplace Violence and Bullying
The ethical perspectives of workplace violence and bullying can be explained in terms of ethical principles. According to (Yoder-Wise, 2011), ethical principles guide organizations to evaluate the moral nature of people’s behaviors. The ethical principles that are commonly used include autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and respect for others. According to the ethical principle of autonomy, an act is considered to be ethical when it gives a person the freedom to make a choice. Workplace violence and bullying are unethical in the sense that, they deny the victims the freedom to make a choice of how they would want to be treated (Copeland & Arnold, 2021). Yonder-Wise (2011) describes beneficence as a term that means to do good. Under this principle, an ethical act is that which generates maximum benefits to others. Workplace violence and bullying are unethical because they do not translate into ‘doing good’ to others (Copeland & Arnold, 2021).
Nurse leaders are guided by the principle of non-maleficence to refrain from behaviors that inflict harm on others. Under the ethical principle of non-maleficence, an act is believed to be ethical or moral when it does not cause any harm to others (Copeland & Arnold, 2021). Workplace violence and bullying violate the principle of non-maleficence because they cause harm to the victims involved. The lack of respect for others is a sign of unethical behavior in the workplace. When employees initiate violent attacks and bullying towards their colleagues, they demonstrate that they lack respect for others (Yonder-Wise, 2011). Therefore, workplace violence and bullying are considered to be unethical because they are a sign of a lack of respect for others within the work environment.
The Effects of Workplace Violence and Bullying on Patient Safety, Patient Outcomes, Nurse Safety, and Organizational Accountability
Workplace violence and bullying negatively affect patient safety, patient outcomes, nurse safety, and organizational accountability. According to Lim et al. (2022), workplace violence and bullying mainly affect the psychological functioning and cognitive abilities of nurses. For example, violence interferes with the safety of nurses in their places of work. Nurses who are psychologically distressed are unable to perform their roles effectively as desired. Such nurses are at increased risk of making errors that negatively affect patient safety. Medical errors that are caused by nurses who constantly experience violence and bullying are associated with negative patient outcomes (Lim et al., 2022). Kim et al. (2021) conducted a study to assess the relationship between workplace violence experiences among nurses and patient safety. They utilized a cross-section study design to collect data among nurses who reported constant incidences of both physical and verbal violence. Findings from the study indicate that workplace violence causes emotional distress among nurses and affects their patient safety perceptions. According to Edmonson et al. (2019), workplace violence and bullying are an organization’s worst enemies because they prevent entities from fulfilling their cultures. A culture of safety cannot thrive in an environment where there is violence and bullying. Organizational accountability is affected by persistent incidences of violence and bullying.
Preventing Legal Vulnerabilities Within the Clinical Environment
Nurse leaders play a key role in preventing legal liabilities resulting from workplace violence and bullying within the clinical environment. Creating strong organizational policies that foster zero tolerance to workplace violence and bullying can help to address these forms of incivility (Edmonson, 2019). Additionally, the nurse leader can prevent workplace bullying and violence by creating awareness of the negative impacts associated with such behaviors, including how employees can interact peacefully at the place of work
Conclusion
Workplace violence and bullying are among the issues that can present challenging situations for nurse leaders. To be able to address the ethical and legal dilemmas that might arise from workplace violence and bullying, nurse leaders need to first understand their legal and ethical implications. Strong organizational policies and employee education can help to restore civility in the work environment.
References
Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety. (2022). Violence and harassment in the workplace. https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/psychosocial/violence.html
Copeland, D., & Arnold, S. (2021). The moral dilemma of interpreting workplace violence. Nursing Inquiry, 28(4), e12406. https://doi.org/10.1111/nin.12406
Edmonson, C., & Zelonka, C. (2019). Our own worst enemies: The nurse bullying epidemic. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 43(3), 274–279. https://doi.org/10.1097/NAQ.0000000000000353
Hebert, C. L. (2018). The legal status of bullying in the United States. file:///C:/Users/Admin/Downloads/rdctss-1814.pdf
Kadivar, M., Manookian, A., Asghari, F., Niknafs, N., Okazi, A., & Zarvani, A. (2017). Ethical and legal aspects of patient’s safety: a clinical case report. Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, 10, 15.
Kim, S., Mayer, C., & Jones, C. B. (2021). Relationships between nurses’ experiences of workplace violence, emotional exhaustion and patient safety. Journal of Research in Nursing: JRN, 26(1-2), 35–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/1744987120960200
Lim, M. C., Jeffree, M. S., Saupin, S. S., Giloi, N., & Lukman, K. A. (2022). Workplace violence in healthcare settings: The risk factors, implications and collaborative preventive measures. Annals of Medicine and Surgery (2012), 78, 103727. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amsu.2022.103727
Yoder-Wise, P.S. (2011). Leading and managing innursing (5thed.). St. Louis, MO: Mosby.ISBN 978-0-323-06977-9.