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Legal Aspects of Nursing

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There are many different legal aspects of nursing. The legal aspects are there to protect the patients. Nurses need to know these because it can put their license in jeopardy, fines, jail time or even worse, harm to a patient. Not only could you be in trouble because you did something, you could also be in trouble for not doing something.
When working with patients that are sick or injured the last thing you need is to let something else other then there sickness or injury interfere with their healing or comfort level. By choosing to become a nurse you accept the laws and responsibilities that come along with it. As a Licensed Vocational Nurse the combination of legal principles, established laws, moral standards and ethical principles guide your practice of nursing. As a nurse you need to know these and how they affect the practice. There will be a lot ethical decisions that you will have to make during your career. By knowing the laws, this will help with the decisions you have to deal with. Laws prescribe proper behavior in society; they sanction acceptable behavior and prohibit unacceptable behavior. It’s important for you to know the basic’s of the legal system, which will help protect you from wrong doing. There are two different types of laws. Civil and criminal. Civil laws are laws that violates a person’s rights, conduct at issue is detrimental to the individual and involves an offense that is against an individual. Civil laws purpose is to right a wrong and make the aggrieved person whole again. Criminal law are laws that are offensive to society in

general, detrimental to society as a whole and involves public offenses such as robbery, murder and assault. Criminal laws are to punish the guilty for the crime and deter and prevent further crimes. It has not always been that nurses held legal liability for alleged harm suffered by

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