This book explores the legal regulation of nursing practice today and sets it in the context of recent developments. Issues examined include the developments in the law concerning consent to treatment, the increasing role of the courts in scrutinising allegations of professional negligence, the litigation process in the light of the Woolf reforms and the regulation of treatment decisions both at the beginnings and the end of life. A well-balanced readable companion for all nurses, this book sets out the scope of the nurses legal rights and obligations.
Structure of the NHS; Nursing Negligence: Patient Complaints; Legal Aspects of Expanded Role and Clinical Guidelines and Protocols; Consent to Treatment (general principles); Children and the Mentally Ill; Confidentiality and Access to Health Care Records; Clinical Research and the Nurse; The Nurse and the Employment Relationship; Nurse Prescribing; Litigation; Reproductive Choice; The End of Life.