Ethical Principles and Legal Concepts in Nursing Practice

Every clinical decision a registered nurse makes sits inside two frames at once: what is ethically right for this person, and what the law and the regulator allow or require. The two usually agree. When they appear to conflict, the nurse's task is not to pick a favourite but to find the lawful, ethically defensible path, ask for help early, and keep the patient safe while that happens. In Canada, most of the law that touches bedside practice is provincial or territorial. Consent and capacity legislation, the order of substitute decision-makers, advance directive instruments, health-privacy statutes, child-protection reporting duties and the standards of the nursing regulator all differ by jurisdiction. Nurses practise under the legislation and the regulator standards of the province or territory where they work. A few matters are federal: the Criminal Code framework for medical assistance in dying, and privacy law for federally regulated organizations and for some cross-border commercial activity. Because the statutes differ, the principles that hold across the country come first, with Ontario as a labelled worked example. The Ontario statutes named below are...