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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Risk taking in rehabilitative care: professional and legal considerations | | Author(s) | Glenda Cook |
| Journal title | Health Care in Later Life, vol 1, no 1, February 1996 |
| Pages | pp 5-13 |
| Keywords | Aftercare ; At risk ; Nursing ; Nurses ; Law ; Standards of provision ; England. |
| Annotation | In the United Kingdom (UK), a growing proportion of older people (especially the young old) enjoy good health, and the likelihood of recovery from diseases or accidents is greater than expected previously. These trends indicate that rehabilitative care will increase, however, there are some dilemmas associated with it. Rehabilitation involves some encouragement of patients to take risks, but, at the same time, a climate of increasing litigation for neglect or injury makes it difficult for professionals to do this without the fear that they will be held responsible for any adverse consequences. This paper discusses this issue with reference to nursing care in England. Nurses tend to have responsibility for the day-to-day implementation of rehabilitation programmes, with the consequence that issues of accountability have been much debated in the nursing literature. Furthermore, nurses have a well established code of conduct in the UK, which should, in theory, clarify many of these issues. It is argued in this paper that the code of conduct does not always provide clear guidance but that a study of legal cases go some way towards helping professionals to establish risk taking as an essential part of practice. |
| Accession Number | CPA-980212201 A |
| Classmark | LN: CA3: LQ: QTE: VR: 583: 82 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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