Ethical, Legal, and Economic Foundations of the Educational Process

1. ETHICAL, LEGAL AND ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS

➢ Healthcare organizations are laden with laws and regulations ensuring clients’ rights to a quality standard of care, to informed consent and subsequently to self-determination. Consequently, it is crucial that the providers of care be equally proficient in both educating nursing students and staff who are or will be the practitioner educators of tomorrow.

➢ Although the physician is primarily held legally accountable for the medical regimen, it is a known fact that patient education generally falls to the nurse. Indeed, the role of a nurse as an educator is pronounced and essential in rendering care to the patient.

➢ We are living in a time wherein the public is not only aware, but demands their rights as recipient of care of the medical profession. They recognize their constitutional rights to freedom of choice and rights to self-determination.

➢ In answer to that demand, federal and state governments, accrediting bodies and professional organizations find it necessary to legislate and provide standards and guidelines to ensure the protection of human rights when it comes to matters of health care.

➢ This creation of health care standards and guidelines also answers to the serious breaches of public confidence and shocking revelations of abuses of human rights in the name of biomedical researches. These issues of human rights are fundamental to the delivery of quality healthcare services, thus, it is essential for an educator to empower the client to make informed choices and to be in control of the consequences of those choices regardless of the outcome.

A DIFFERENTIATED VIEW OF ETHICS, MORALITY AND THE LAW

➢ Although ethics has been known to be a branch of classical philosophy, due to the complexities of modern-day living and the heightened awareness of an educated public, ethical issues related to healthcare have surfaced as a major concern...