In this task you are asked to respond to the three scenarios presented below. You are to consider the legal requirements for student nurses & midwives, registered nurses & midwives and the implications for the health facility and/or education provider if required in each of the cases. You are also to reflect on your life experience and discuss the ease or difficulty in meeting these requirements.

Case 1:

You are on placement with another student at an acute hospital. One day the other student appears to be struggling with some tasks and you ask them if they are ok. They reply that they were playing sport the night before and hurt their leg and back. They have had a back problem for a while but it usually doesn't cause a problem. Currently they are unable to undertake many physical aspects of care and are slow to move around the ward and are getting behind on their work which is impacting on the care of patients. The next day they attend placement again and they are clearly worse. You ask them if they should be there but they reply that they have to get through this placement as they cannot afford to repeat the placement later. They ask you to help cover for them when they cannot complete tasks. You are concerned that they may do further harm to themselves and that their situation may impact on your placement.

Case 2:

You are the flatmate of a fellow registered nurse and have been living together for the last 18 months. You both work on the same ward. Over the last 6 months you have noticed a change in their behaviour with them becoming more erratic, unable to pay bills/rent on time and selling items to have money at hand. One night you get a phone call from your flatmate asking you to come and pick them up from the police station. They confide to you that they have been arrested for possession of illegal drugs and have also been charged with an attempt to sell these drugs. They have been bailed and expect a court appearance in the next few months. They ask you not to tell anyone as they are going to straighten their life out and need their job to be able to do this.

Case 3:

You are a senior registered nurse at a rural health facility. You are responsible for facilitating the clinical placement of nursing students at the facility for a number of education providers. You rarely see staff from these facilities as most communication is done via telephone or email. You are told by a community member that a student appears to be drinking alcohol quite heavily each night. You had noticed them becoming more withdrawn during the placement. It appears now that they are attending shifts apparently still under the influence of alcohol. You decide to confront them as their behaviour is putting your patients and staff at risk. They state that they have been struggling with the death of a close friend a month ago and that without the support of family they are needing to drink to help sleep as it quietens their thoughts. They don't want you tell anyone as they need to get through this placement as they cannot afford to repeat the placement or course and would have to withdraw from their degree.

- TASK 1 ADVICE

Here is some information that may be of assistance for you for Task 1 that you can print off to guide your work on the first assessment once you have seen the taskvodcast.

This is a short answer essay. This can be written as an essay without headings or you can choose to use headings, for example;

Either of these approaches could be used;

Introduction/Overview

Reflection

Conclusion

You can do the conclusion first and then the reflection - it is up to you, keep in mind this is not a conclusion as it would be in a formal essay).

Within the main area for discussion on each case study, firstly, you need to identify the key issues present within the case study and then you need to identify the key laws that relate to this and discuss them. The laws fall into three areas; i.e. laws that relate to nursing and nursing students, laws that relate to the education provider and laws that relate to the health facility. Some of these laws are not specific to nursing so you will need to search and identify these. The the USC site should be helpful in this as will workplace laws for health facilities (you need to think generically regarding workplace laws as well). We cannot tell you how many laws are relevant to each case as this is what you need to research and discuss. It will also be important for you to source journal articles that you can use to provide rigour to your discussions within each case study. This you can do, for example, by going into the library tab on the USC website, choose databases and then click on health within the databases section. Then you can click on one of these, for example you could choose CINAHL and then in the box you can search relevant to the articles you are looking for, for example, student nurses and law etc. A number of articles should come up and you can then limit these to the last 5 years by selecting this on the left hand side. The librarians are very good at assisting your queries if you need assistance in using your databases. You will see from the marking rubric that a minimum number of journal articles and text books are required (see marking rubric) in addition to these references you can also use laws (both case law and legislation) and relevant, reputable government or industry websites (watch the vodcast).

You need to reflect on each case study and provide details of reflection around this area of issue. This is the only part of your assignment that can be written in 1stperson (the rest must be in academic style, 3rd person). It is helpful to use a reflective cycle in doing this (and note not all areas of the reflective cycle may be used it is used to guide your reflective process). We do not expect headings within this section. Some Information is provided on blackboard regarding this in the assessment tab.

Students are not expected to have experienced any of these situations but in researching the laws and understanding what the issues are you need to reflect on your life experiences and discuss whether it is difficult or easy to meet these requirements and why.

It will also be important for you to write a conclusion this can either be at the end of each case study or at the end of the reflection for each case study or after your global reflection. As long as the assignment flows grammatically and is clear for the reader this choice is up to you.

Ensure you have your case studies, your course outline and your marking rubric with you when you complete you assignment - also ensure that you also use your Harvard Referencing Guide to accurately complete your referencing. If you are having difficulty please ensure you book to see academic advisors for assistance (and do not leave this to the last minute as you will need to book a time and get feedback which will assist you before your final submission.

When we reflect it is important to not just remember but to think about the situation or event and analyse this. It is important that in reflecting there is knowledge and learning that takes place from the act of reflection. In order to do this we think about reflection in stages.

Gibbs Reflective Cycle (1988) is a good tool to use to help you to do this. First one thinks about the event then what you felt and thought at the time. You then evaluate these feelings and thoughts, was it good or bad? What sense do you make from the situation? What could you have done differently or how could the situation have been handled differently? If it arose again what would you do (and why)?