Explaining The Nursing NMC Code Of Conduct

Explaining The Nursing NMC Code Of Conduct Nursing plays a vital role in health care serving as a means of the care delivery and linking a patient with the system. In this vein, nursing is regarded as a synonym of caring with the care carried out in an ethnically decisive way (Lawson Peate, 2009). When addressing, caring for and implementing the prescribed treatment to a patient, nursing relies on ethical principles along with the industry-accepted standards of care. The duty of care legally enforced in nursing has blurred the lines between healthcare law and ethics. Thus, law embodies a variety of ethical concepts, including informed consent, patient rights, access to care, confidentiality, withholding and withdrawing care and postcode prescribing (Hyde, 2008). In addition to ethical requirements, nursing is a moral and human endeavour, as it exposes nurses to various healthcare situations, the resolution of which implies consideration of the moral aspect rather than a medical one. Given evidence cited above, nursing has been historically bound with the notion of duty. The duty of care has remained pivotal in the present-day nursing because of the intrinsic association between concepts of rights and duties (Beckwith Franklin, 2007). In other words, once the duty is established, a patient is eligible for care, which imposes both a legal and moral responsibility on a nurse to carry out and facilitate care delivery. Therefore, nursing activities and performance require control for compliance with healthcare ethics and morale. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) is the Parliament-assigned organisation responsible for protecting the public with high standards of care provided to patients and clients by nurses and midwives. In this respect, this regulatory body seeks to identify and determine the standards of professional conduct and enforcing healthcare professionals to implement these standards in their daily practice and routine. Ethics and honesty represent the core values of the NMC framework (Lawson Peate, 2009). The NMC Code of Professional Conduct is the core legally enforced ethical guideline for nursing. It sets for high standards of care to be demonstrated during professional endeavours expecting high level of compliance among all practitioners. Indeed, the initial code of professional conduct was introduced by the UKCC in line with the Nurses, Midwives and health Visitors Act (1979). The content of the ethical framework was further expanded by the UKCC Scope of Professional Practice released in 1992 and the Guidelines for Professional Practice of 1996 (Woolrich, 2008). In 2002, the NMC developed and launched a code of professional conduct to cover contents of the three documents, thus, setting a uniform guideline for professional ethics and standards of care. Having established the sole authority to oversee and regulate the nursing practice, the NMC updated the guideline of professional ethics in 2004 (Hyde, 2008). Along with the reviewed and expanded content of the ethical framework, t he document received a new title â€" NMC Code of Professional Conduct: Standards for Performance and Ethics. Another update took place in 2008 to rename the guideline into The Code: Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics for Nurses and Midwives (Woolrich, 2008). Statements and standards outlined by the code of professional conduct aim at reinforcing the concept of duty to align the nursing practice and the performed activities with the notion of care (Wilkinson, 2008). Hence, the NMC Code is fundamental for safeguarding the public health and well-being in terms of the nursing care received. Moreover, principles of the NMC Code rooted in healthcare law and basic healthcare values lay down the ground for effective practice. As already indicated above, the code of professional nursing conduct has been regularly reviewed and updated to reflect the current patient needs and preferences in the ethics, conduct and performance of nurses in the contemporary health care. The NMC Code relies on the key principles that align professional responsibilities of nurses with human rights to form an ethical aspect of professional behaviour that is likely to meet expectations of the community regarding the role of health care (Beckwith Franklin, 2007). By dist inguishing the moral dimension of the nursing practice, the code emphasises public protection and individual nurse’s accountability for the behaviour and care carried out in support of patient health and well-being.