This paper presents findings from an interview with a registered nurse working in an OB/GYN department, exploring how legal and ethical issues intersect with nursing practice. The interviewee identifies staffing shortages, mandatory overtime, malpractice liability, administrative regulation, and managed care documentation requirements as the most pressing concerns facing nurses today. Drawing on both the interview and supporting research, the paper examines how these pressures compromise patient care quality, fuel defensive nursing practices, and create unclear professional boundaries. The paper concludes that current legal frameworks, including HIPAA and managed care policies, have increased rather than relieved the burdens on registered nurses, and that systemic reform may be necessary to preserve care quality.
The paper demonstrates the use of a primary source interview as evidence, triangulated against secondary research. Rather than treating the interview as anecdote, the author repeatedly validates the nurse's observations with citations from Guevara and Mendias (2002), modeling how qualitative fieldwork and published literature can reinforce one another in applied professional analysis.
The paper opens with an introduction establishing the interviewee's professional background and the scope of the discussion. A lengthy interview synopsis section covers multiple subtopics — staffing, overtime, technology, patient care quality, malpractice, and administrative regulation — in roughly the order they arose during the interview. A separate conclusions section synthesizes the main legal and ethical takeaways and closes with a call for systemic reform. The structure is linear and interview-driven rather than thesis-driven.
There are many legal and ethical issues facing registered nurses in today's society. The subject of this interview is a registered nurse who works in the OB/GYN department of a major medical provider. She has worked in this position for five years and is therefore well versed in issues surrounding law and medicine. Her primary concerns regarding legal and ethical issues relate to ethical considerations and the legal systems being utilized in today's medical communities. Administrative regulation also emerged as a topic of concern during the interview. The results of the interview, as well as supporting evidence from current research, are presented below.
One of the first topics discussed was the range of challenges facing nurses in today's economy. Based on an analysis of the general economy and the current state of nursing within the United States, the primary legal and administrative concerns for a majority of nurses — as confirmed by the interview — include inadequate staffing, mandatory overtime and associated scheduling practices, ethical questions, occupational hazards, and burnout (Guevara & Mendias, 2002). All of these issues carry potential legal pitfalls.
The most pressing of these issues relate to mandatory overtime, scheduling practices, and the potential for occupational burnout and compromised care. More and more nurses trained for one job function are being assigned numerous functions inside and outside the scope of their position. Though they are compensated for overtime, they are not necessarily being uniformly compensated for increased job responsibilities. While nursing organizations are standing up for nurses' rights, many are leaving the industry due to increased demands and inadequate compensation. Nurses are generally being assigned larger patient loads alongside additional paperwork and management responsibilities.
The law dictates that nurses have a responsibility to perform certain job functions within the scope of their practice, but that scope is continually changing given the increased demands placed on nurses across different specialties within the United States and beyond. The legal issues facing nurses in the United States — including questions of ethics and system management — are not unique to this country alone (Guevara & Mendias, 2002).
Due to a shortage of available nurses in the United States, the interviewee suggested that nurses currently working in the field are overworked, underpaid, and overstressed. This is itself a significant concern because it may contribute to compromised medical care — an issue of importance to nurses, physicians, and, most critically, patients.
Perhaps the biggest issue facing nurses is the potential for compromised care and the resulting lawsuits that may follow if patients are not cared for properly. Malpractice insurance is on the rise among OB/GYN practitioners, according to the nurse interviewed, and many are leaving practice because they can no longer afford coverage. The shortage of available and qualified OB/GYN physicians has shifted more responsibilities to nurses who may or may not be adequately trained or professionally qualified to handle them.
According to the interviewee, there is a shortage of nurses available to meet the demands the medical community is placing on them. This results in burnout, extended hours, and pressure on nurses to carry out functions they may not be fully trained for. From an ethical standpoint, patients are being deprived of the high-quality, direct care they deserve and have come to expect from the medical community.
Instead of receiving direct care from a nurse, patients are increasingly likely to be assisted by a nurse associate or another staff member who may not be as knowledgeable about their needs. The patient does not necessarily have a choice in this matter, which further complicates the situation and raises the potential for malpractice claims and other legal problems. Increasingly, patients are asked to sign documents limiting the liability of medical care providers, which opens the door for ethical scrutiny of current medical practice.
In addition, many nurses arrive at work in a compromised emotional state, bringing negative attitudes that may limit their ability to provide effective and responsible care. This is an ethical and moral concern that has yet to be adequately addressed within the field.
From an ethical perspective, nurses have an obligation to provide personal care that protects patients to the fullest extent of their ability. They are also obligated to act in patients' best interests while maintaining confidentiality. Given the current organizational structure of many healthcare systems, however, fulfilling this basic function has become extremely difficult.
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