Thinks critically and analyses practice

Engages in therapeutic and professional relationships

RN practice is based on purposefully engaging in effective therapeutic and professional relationships. This includes collegial generosity in the context of mutual trust and respect in professional relationships.

RNs, as regulated health professionals, are responsible and accountable for ensuring they are safe and have the capability for practice. This includes ongoing self-management and responding when there is concern about other health professionals’ capability for practice. RNs are responsible for their professional development and contribute to the development of others. They are also responsible for providing information and education to enable people to make decisions and take action in relation to their health.

Comprehensively conducts assessments

RNs accurately conduct comprehensive and systematic assessments. They analyse information and data and communicate outcomes as the basis for practice.

Develops a plan for nursing practice

RNs are responsible for the planning and communication of nursing practice. Agreed plans are developed in partnership. They are based on the RNs appraisal of comprehensive, relevant information, and evidence that is documented and communicated.

Provides safe, appropriate and responsive quality nursing practice

RNs provide and may delegate, quality and ethical goal-directed actions. These are based on comprehensive and systematic assessment, and the best available evidence to achieve planned and agreed outcomes.

Evaluates outcomes to inform nursing practice

RNs take responsibility for the evaluation of practice based on agreed priorities, goals, plans and outcomes and revises practice accordingly.

The Code of conduct for nurses sets out the legal requirements, professional behaviour and conduct expectations for all nurses, in all practice settings, in Australia. It describes the principles of professional behaviour that guide safe practice and clearly outlines the conduct expected of nurses by their colleagues and the broader community.

Individual nurses have their own personal beliefs and values. However, the code outlines specific standards which all nurses are expected to adopt in their practice. The code also gives students of nursing an appreciation of the conduct and behaviours expected of nurses. Nurses have a professional responsibility to understand and abide by the code. In practice, nurses also have a duty to make the interests of people their first concern and to practise safely and effectively.

The code is consistent with the National Law. It includes seven principles of conduct, grouped into domains, each with an explanatory value statement. Each value statement is accompanied by practical guidance to demonstrate how to apply it in practice. Underpinning the code is the expectation that nurses will exercise their professional judgement to deliver the best possible outcomes in practice.

This code applies to all nurses

The principles of the code apply to all types of nursing practice in all contexts. This includes any work where a nurse uses nursing skills and knowledge, whether paid or unpaid, clinical or non-clinical. This includes work in the areas of clinical care, clinical leadership, clinical governance responsibilities, education, research, administration, management, advisory roles, regulation or policy development. The code also applies to all settings where a nurse may engage in these activities, including face-to-face, publications, or via online or electronic means.

(NMBA, 2018)

Domain: Practice legally

Domain: Practise safely, effectively and collaboratively

Domain: Act with professional integrity

Domain: Promote health and wellbeing

The code will be used:

• to support individual nurses in the delivery of safe practice and fulfilling their professional roles

• as a guide for the public and consumers of health services about the standard of conduct and behaviour they should expect from nurses

• to help the NMBA protect the public, in setting and maintaining the standards set out in the code and to ensure safe and effective nursing practice

• when evaluating the professional conduct of nurses. If professional conduct varies significantly from the values outlined in the code, nurses should be prepared to explain and justify their decisions and actions. Serious or repeated failure to abide by this code may have consequences for nurses’ registration and may be considered as unsatisfactory professional performance, unprofessional conduct or professional misconduct, and

• as a resource for activities which aim to enhance the culture of professionalism in the Australian health system. These include use, for example, in administration and policy development by health services and other institutions; in nursing education, in management and for the orientation, induction and supervision of nurses and students.

An international code of ethics for nurses was first adopted by the International Council of Nurses (ICN) in 1953. It has been revised and reaffirmed at various times since, most recently with this review and revision completed in 2012.

(ICN, 2012)

1. Nurses and people
2. Nurses and practice
3. Nurses and the profession
4. Nurses and co-workers

Nurses have four fundamental responsibilities: to promote health, to prevent illness, to restore health and alleviate suffering. The need for nursing is universal. Inherent in nursing is a respect for human rights, including cultural rights, the right to life and choice, to dignity and to be treated with respect. Nursing care is respectful of and unrestricted by considerations of age, colour, creed, culture, disability or illness, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, politics, race or social status. Nurses render health services to the individual, the family and the community and coordinate their services with those of related groups.

(ICN, 2012)

This guidance is to help registered health practitioners understand and meet their obligations when using social media. When using social media, the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (the National Law), your National Board’s code of ethics and professional conduct (the Code of conduct) and the Guidelines for advertising regulated health services (the Advertising guidelines) apply, just as when you interact in person.

1. What is social media?
2. How is the use of social media relevant to my practice?
3. What are the common pitfalls when using social media?

When using social media, you can meet your obligations by:

• complying with confidentiality and privacy obligations
• complying with your professional obligations as defined in your Board’s Code of conduct
• maintaining professional boundaries
• communicating professionally and respectfully with or about patients, colleagues and employers, and
• not presenting information that is false, misleading or deceptive, including advertising only claims that are supported by acceptable evidence.

Notifications about students

There is only one ground for a mandatory notification about students. Practitioners and education providers only need to notify us when they have a ‘reasonable belief’ that a student has an impairment that, when undertaking clinical training, may place the public at substantial risk of harm (a very high threshold for reporting risk of harm to the public). This document explains what reasonable belief is and what impairment means in this context. The requirement to report is also based on the level of risk. This document also gives more advice about when impairment must be reported, and the obligations of notifiers.

Concerns to report about practitioners

Notifiable concerns have a specific meaning under the National Law. There are four concerns that may trigger a mandatory notification, depending on the risk of harm to the public:

• impairment
• intoxication while practising
• a significant departure from accepted professional standards, and
• sexual misconduct.

1. Mandatory notifications by clinical placement facilities
2. Mandatory notifications by education providers
3. Voluntary notification

Practitioners

1. Mandatory notification requirements
2. Concerns to report
3. Notifications by treating practitioners
4. Notifications by non-treating practitioners
5. Notifications by employers of practitioners

There are consequences for practitioners and education providers who fail to make a mandatory notification when they have to, although this is not a criminal offence under the National Law:

• if you are a practitioner who has failed to notify, your National Board may take regulatory action against you (such as, for example, a caution). It will consider all the circumstances before it decides whether to do so.
• if you are an education provider who has failed to notify (as section 143 of the National Law requires), the National Board that registered the student must publish details of this on its website. If the Board recommends it, Ahpra may make a statement about the failure in our annual report.

Mandatory notification obligations only extend to an education provider’s (organisation’s) staff if the staff member is also a registered practitioner. An education provider is expected to have processes and protocols in place to assess when and how it would make a mandatory notification.

Medication Calculation review    

Videos and lecture presentations on medication calculations.