Nursing responsibility in context

Abstract

The previous chapter considered the rules of law that govern the setting of standards for the nursing profession through the law of negligence. Those rules govern the conduct of individual nurses. They might seem to suggest that the law sees nurses as working in a vacuum, unconnected with fellow nurses, or with other health professionals such as doctors, anaesthetists and midwives. In fact, the law of negligence allows the context of nursing to be taken into account. Identifying the standard of care means asking how a responsible body of colleagues would have expected a nurse to act. Nevertheless, there are other ways in which the context in which nurses find themselves working is taken into account. This chapter is concerned with the principles governing the nurse’s relationship with her colleagues.