Professional standards expected of nurses from an Israeli legal perspective

The paper aims to analyze the Legal reference to the required nursing professional standards in Israel. This is done based on various scenarios, mainly those described in legal proceedings. Such proceedings may be a criminal charge against the nurse, a damages claim or a disciplinary procedure. These proceedings may have different aims and structure, but they may be used together to construct a general picture of the legal reference to the required behavioral norms expected of nurses. The following breaches of nursing standards are mentioned in the paper: A mistake that is considered to be negligence, bad clinical judgement in the time of the event (as opposed to hindsight), failure to obtain information related to the patient, breach of the duty to observe a patient, failure to medicate properly, failure to protect patient’s privacy, breaching of duty of care in relation to medical devices (failure to detect malfunctioning equipment, failure to detect patient’s disruption of the equipment functionality), failure to record or report, improper nursing diagnosis, not obtaining a physician’s confirmation or validation to comprehensive or substantial instruction/orders, not implementing medical instruction in a critical manner while considering benefit and harm, failing to meet the experienced nurse standard and failing to meet the novice nurse standard. The court reasoning and decisions seem similar in those cases to cases focusing on physician’s standards of care. Although the “public discussion” usually revolves around Medical Malpractice, it seems that in some cases, the nursing staff is equally liable and in others the nursing staff is the only liable party This emphasizes the important role of nurses within the medical staff and their accountability.