Professional behaviours and accountability are the key focus of Chapter Six.
Some of the professional nursing standards that were discussed include: professional
responsibility & accountability, knowledge-based practice, competent application of
knowledge, a code of ethics, provision of services in the public interest and selfregulation.
Strategies to ensure that the practice of nursing be lived as a call to care
were included in the discussion of professionalism. The discussion then focusses more
definitively on accountability and begins by drawing a connection between
accountability, the ethic of care and CNA Code of Ethics key ethical responsibilities. A
crucial order of priorities in nursing accountability is clearly articulated and it is
asserted that a client’s welfare supersedes all other responsibilities. Explicit tools are
suggested for nurses to follow when they encounter an ethical conflict with institutional
policy. At the end of the Chapter, two Cases in Point are presented. One involves a
client record being intentionally altered. The other features an alarming situation where
a nurse is ordered to withhold crucial information from clients who are at risk of harm.
Keywords: Accountability, Affirmative action, Boundary violations, Code of
ethics, Communities of practice, Conflict of interest, Ethics committees, Ethic of
care, Fiduciary relationship, Fitness to practice, Professional, Professional
boundaries, Professional standards, Responsibility, Self-regulation, Synergism,
Scope of practice.