NRNP 6665 Week 2 Discussion: Ethical and Legal Foundations of PMHNP Care
Ethical and Legal Issues in PMHNP
The disturbance of individuals’ behaviors, thoughts and emotions that result in challenges in human functioning indicates a mental disorder. About half a billion people worldwide have been diagnosed with at least one mental disorder, and 25% of the global population experiences such a condition in their lifetime (Wong et al., 2020). Managing mental disorders, especially in non-conforming and aggressive patients, involves prevention, anticipation and restraint. The last strategy is the most controversial since it potentially attracts numerous ethical and legal ramifications that vary with a population. The following discussion reviews the literature to assess various ethical and legal issues related to the restraint of patients in pediatric and adults in psychiatric care.
Ethical and Legal Issues in Adults
Vergallo and Gulino explored strategies that can be utilized to systematically phase out the use of restraint in psychiatric care to safeguard the health and safety of patients (2021). They reviewed the failure to enforce necessary measures that result in litigation and lawsuits against psychiatrists and health care facilities and the inadequate capital to enforce such measures. The researchers highlighted the lack of congruence between restraint methods and international legal environments for human rights enforcement as the first legal issue for these procedures. They infringe on patients’ freedom of personal liberty and potentially subject them to injuries that attract litigations. Such incidents are common and prevail at least 20 times in every 100 restraint cases (Vergallo & Gulino, 2021). Vergallo and Gulino recommend hefty penalties for providers and care facilities promoting restraint and harming patients (2021). The recommendation aims to challenge them to deploy most care when using restraint. Information from this article informs psychiatric providers to assess restraint-free as a model for handling patients with acute behaviors or conform to organizational, regulatory and legal provisions to avoid litigations.
Struggling to Meet Your Deadline?
Get your assignment on NRNP 6665 Week 2 Discussion: Ethical and Legal Foundations of PMHNP Care done on time by medical experts. Don’t wait – ORDER NOW!
Haugom et al. reviewed ethical issues in the restraint of psychiatric patients in wards by reviewing restraint incidents in 57 wards through exploratory and descriptive approaches (2019). The researchers reviewed data using quantitative content analysis, discovering various ethical issues related to the procedure. One of the major discoveries was that patients had negative experiences towards restraint (Haugom et al., 2019). This indicates the conflicting value of autonomy by restraining psychiatric patients from restraining against their consent and desires. Patients held that it was out of coercion, even in voluntary restraint, without a specific legal basis. Information from the researchers informs PMHNP of various ethical issues surrounding using restraints in a care setting.
Ethical and Legal Issues in Children
In a systematic review and narrative synthesis by Nielson and colleagues, the researchers attempted to assess physical restraint in pediatric inpatient mental healthcare services (2019). The researchers reviewed sixteen quantitative studies on the subject matter. Some inclusion criteria were inpatient psychiatric patients below eighteen years old and with experience with physical restraints. Many reviewed studies linked physical restraint to patients’ aggression and found intrinsic and extrinsic factors to be determinants of adolescents’ restraints in psychiatric care. The review highlighted potential ethical factors associated with this practice. The major issue is the risk of malfeasance that results in physical restraint. This ethical issue outweighs the perceived value of maintaining the safety of the restrained patient (Nielson et al., 2019). The practice is vulnerable to abuse which causes another ethical issue of disproportionate use of force to restrain patients, which can amount to psychological harm such as fear, anxiety and trauma that has more damaging impacts. The authors recommend using physical restrain in pediatric mental care as the last resort to eliminate the associated risks to patients and minimize the breach of professional ethics for PMHNP. Information from this research can be crucial in practice by informing practitione
Order this paper