Awareness of community health nurses on legal aspects of health care
The study on awareness of community health nurses on legal aspects of health care was conducted to analyze the nurses knowledge on the laws related to the health care. Health care laws serve as a hallmark in maintaining the equilibrium in the delivery of health care services. It goes without s...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2011
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3555/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3555/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3555/1/special%2520issue%25202011_28.pdf |
| Summary: | The study on awareness of community health
nurses on legal aspects of health care was
conducted to analyze the nurses knowledge on the
laws related to the health care. Health care laws
serve as a hallmark in maintaining the equilibrium
in the delivery of health care services. It goes
without saying that this particular field of activities
calls for a sound technical and legal knowledge. In
the current scenario the nursing service is widened
and deals with various issues on legal aspects of
health care.
To keep abreast with such developments
and to face the changing challenge, it is essential
that the nurses are equipped with updated
knowledge on laws related to health care. This will
enhance safe health care delivery in an unbiased
standardized way.
Therefore this study was conducted to
determine the awareness of nurses in public health
sector on legal aspects of health care. Using nonexperimental
descriptive research design, with the
objectives 1. To determine the level of knowledge
on legal aspects among nurses, 2. To associate the
level of knowledge score of nurses with the
variables such as (a) age (b) academic education (c)
work experience (d) exposure to in-service
education.
Comparing the private and government
health care sectors, the government health centers
has meager turnover of nurse than the other private
health care centers. Thus the consistency of the
samples would be maintained. Via convenient nonprobability
sampling technique 180 community
health nurses were selected as samples. To measure
the awareness of nurses’ knowledge on legal
aspects, the researcher developed a questionnaire
after a wide search of literature and with the
experts’ opinion. The syllabus of the student nurses
was also perused. The content validity, the
reliability of the tool was measured using Test and
Retest method.
Generally health care system is governed
by the laws, rules, regulations and other
jurisprudence that cover a wide range of legal
concerns, from healthcare law, mental health,
public health, technology and medical care, to
medicine, and the entire healthcare field, including
specific laws governing the health industry:
physicians, nurses, hospitals and health systems,
health maintenance organizations, health insurers,managed care companies, nursing facilities, home
care providers, social services and the relationship
among them and patients. So, to cover all the
aspects of health care laws, the investigator
classified the legal aspects into four headings, they
are 1.Sources of Law. 2. Laws on Health care
Personnel. 3. Laws on Information management
and 4.Laws of Protection in health care sector.
The study revealed that among the nurses
in the assessed public health care areas, only 11.7%
nurses had the expected adequate level of
knowledge on Legal Aspects of Health Care while
the remaining 88.3% nurses had a moderate level
of knowledge.Therefore, the result shows that nurses
have moderate knowledge on legal aspects of
health care, and they need more enhancement of
knowledge through continuing nursing education
and by maximum utilization of the library. |
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