Nursing Specialty for Aged Care Act-myassignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about theNursing Specialty for Aged Care Act. Answer: In aged care, one of that major safety or legal issues that is seen is mainly due to incidence of abuse in older clients. According to the Aged Care Act, it is the responsibility of carers to maintain the rights and responsibilities of aged care such as well treating the client and ensuring the highest quality of care by meeting all health and safety standards of care. However, despite legislations and organizational protocol on aged care, prevalence of elder abuse and neglect has become common (Yon et al., 2017). As a nurse, I explored this issue in my clinical setting where many nurses did not had appropriate attitude towards caring for older adults and they violated their core responsibility of providing safe, appropriate and responsive quality nursing care according to the standard 6 of the registered nurse standards for practice (Registered nurse standards for practice., (2017). Nurses were found to be irresponsive to address elder abuse and report about such issues to relevant authorities. The review of studies has revealed that elder abuse has become prevalent due to understaffed nursing facility, lack of quality caregiver and other societal, cultural and familial influence (Burnes et al., 2015).. In addition, Dong, X. Q. (2015) showed that risk of abuse including physical, financial, emotional abuse and neglect is more in older women compared to older men. Shared living, low income and presence of large family members also increase the risk of financial, emotional and physical abuse. Another issue facing residential aged care in Australia is that professional carers find it difficult to recognize signs of abuse and adequately respond to them. Many staffs do not go ahead with reporting about abuse because of the increase in risk to people due to cognitive impairment, physical frailty and fear of retaliation in elder clients. In this situation, it is necessary nurse understand their professional role in safety of patient and identify differential response to alleviate or prevent mistreatment of elder clients in health care setting. According to the position statement of the Australian College of Nursing on the role of registered nurse in residential aged care facilities, the registered nurse should be present on-site and available at all times to promote safety and well-being of residents. To reduce the incidence of adult abuse, it is necessary for nurses to develop different skills mix such as communicating with clients over difficult topics. The residential care homes or other health care setting should also integrate adult protection principles in daily practice to ensure and develop skills of nurses in recognizing and reporting about abuse in the right time. In the process of treatment and delivery of care, nurses are often required to share information with patients or other members to optimize the care process. However, there are ethical considerations related to sharing of patients information. According to the ethical code of conduct for health care professionals, all of them have the legal and ethical responsibility to protect and respect the privacy and confidentiality of client (Haug, 2017). This is in relevance with the ethical code of autonomy as it enables patient to decide how and with whom their information needs to be shared. HIPAA also reminds regarding health information privacy and suggest that health care professionals who have access to patient records have the obligation to keep the information in confidence. This means clinicians as well as nurse need to advocate, uphold and defend patients right to privacy while sharing patients information with others (Prater, 2017). In addition, the right to privacy has links with patient autonomy as it states that individual patients should be allowed to take their own decision regarding how information is shared. Despite the implementation of legal and ethical standards for maintaining privacy and confidentiality of clients information, nurses are often confronted with challenges in complying with the obligation. This risk is particularly seen when nurses have to look after older patients or those with cognitive impairment who lacks decision making skills. In this situation, they face the biggest dilemma of maintaining the safety of client as well as protecting the privacy of such clients. To take decision for elder people with poor mental and decision making capacity, the nurse have a critical role to balance the best interest of client. Suzuki, C., Ota, K., Matsuda, (2015) also points out that although ethics in information sharing is long recognized while collaborating with other health care organization, however staffs often experience challenges in the extent to which the information should be shared. One of the most important dilemma for nurses is that whether they should give more priority to protecting client confidentiality over the need to share important information with others or vice versa. Other factors that cause conflicts for nurses in information sharing include abuse, mental health problems and poor mental capacity of patient. Conflict mainly arose between autonomy and right to beneficence of client. To balance both the obligation in nursing practice, it is necessary to balance various interests in client information. Nurse and other health professional must also contribute to following all organizational standards established for patient privacy and confidentiality of patient information (Hutchinso n et al., 2014). The learning exercise for module 1 mainly gave the idea about legal or safety issues in aged care due to the prevalence of elder abuse. The main knowledge gained from the exercise was that elder abuse has become common and in clinical setting, it is mainly seen due to low staffing level and burden of other task in clinical setting. The review of research also pointed out to the fact that identifying and responding to abuse becomes difficult for nurses due to the fear of retaliation and vulnerability to harm in older clients. However, one gap in the task was that it did not explained in detail about the health risk to older clients due to incidence of abuse. Hence, gaining knowledge in this area will further motivate the nurses to understand why reporting and responding to elder abuse is a critical responsibility. Considering the health related consequences of abuse in elder adults, it can be said that both physical and psychological effects are huge in affected people. Physical effec ts of abuse included sleep disturbances, susceptibility to new diseases, exacerbation of existing health issues, sleep disturbance and physical pain. In addition, the psychological effects of elder abuse included high level of stress and depression in patients (Dong et al., 2013). A nurse who is sensitive to the consequences of elder abuse are likely to take prompt response in both reporting and treating such patients. The exercise done for second module mainly gave knowledge regarding ethical obligations for health care professionals in maintaining privacy and confidentiality of client information. The nursing dilemma in this context was also seen in people with poor mental capacity and those having illness like dementia. This research points out to the need to improve personal practice by building better nurse-patient relationship. Better interaction with patients regarding decision making for sharing information is likely to minimize conflicts and balance the needs of beneficence and client confidentiality in care too. The success of decision making process in clinical practice is also dependent on nurses capability to understand patients need (Campos Graveto, 2009). Reference Burnes, D., Pillemer, K., Caccamise, P. L., Mason, A., Henderson, C. R., Berman, J., ... Salamone, A. (2015). Prevalence of and risk factors for elder abuse and neglect in the community: a population?based study.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society,63(9), 1906-1912. Burnes, D., Pillemer, K., Caccamise, P. L., Mason, A., Henderson, C. R., Berman, J., ... Salamone, A. (2015). Prevalence of and risk factors for elder abuse and neglect in the community: a population?based study.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society,63(9), 1906-1912. Campos, D. C. F. D., Graveto, J. M. G. D. N. (2009). The role of nurses and patients' involvement in the clinical decision-making process.Revista latino-americana de enfermagem,17(6), 1065-1070. Dong, X. Q. (2015). Elder abuse: systematic review and implications for practice.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society,63(6), 1214-1238. Dong, X., Chen, R., Chang, E. S., Simon, M. (2013). Elder abuse and psychological well-being: A systematic review and implications for research and policy-A mini review.Gerontology,59(2), 132-142. Haug, C. J. (2017). Whose Data Are They Anyway? Can a Patient Perspective Advance the Data-Sharing Debate?.New England Journal of Medicine,376(23), 2203-2205. Hutchinson, K. M., Shedlin, M. G., Gallo, B., Krainovich-Miller, B., Fulmer, T. (2014). Ethics?in?the?Round: A Guided Peer Approach for Addressing Ethical Issues Confronting Nursing Students.Nursing education perspectives,35(1), 58-60. Prater, V. (2017).Confidentiality, privacy and security of health information: Balancing interests. [online] Available at: https://healthinformatics.uic.edu/resources/articles/confidentiality-privacy-and-security-of-health-information-balancing-interests/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2017]. Registered nurse standards for practice., (2017).Registered nurse standards for practice. [online] Available at: https://file:///C:/Users/User00/Downloads/1773726_1981687386_Module1-NMBAstandardracticeofr.PDF [Accessed 10 Oct. 2017]. Suzuki, C., Ota, K., Matsuda, M. (2015). Information-sharing ethical dilemmas and decision-making for public health nurses in Japan.Nursing ethics,22(5), 533-547. Yon, Y., Mikton, C. R., Gassoumis, Z. D., Wilber, K. H. (2017). Elder abuse prevalence in community settings: a systematic review and meta-analysis.The Lancet Global Health,5(2), e147-e156.