Law and the Caregiver: A Review of Nurse-Patient Relationship

Authors: Kelvin Bribena PhD

Affiliation: Faculty of Law, Niger Delta University, Wilberforce Island, Bayelsa State, Nigeria.

Corresponding Author: [email protected]

September 13, 2025

SIAR-Global Journal of Medicine & Pharmaceutical Review

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17117241

Law and the Caregiver: A Review of Nurse-Patient Relationship
Review Article Medicine

Abstract

The professional autonomy of nursing has spawned a legal framework to regulate the practice of the profession. This legal framework is in the form of professional codes of ethics, statutes and case law relating to the nursing profession. The composite legal rules denote the rights, duties and likely liabilities of nurses in the interaction with patients. It is against this background that this paper examined the rights, duties and likely liabilities of nurses in nurse in–patient relationship. This paper never aimed to portray nurse-patient relationship as one in which only rights of the patient resonate; neither does it intend to present the relationship as that of ‘cat and mouse. In this light, the paper endeavoured to address the rights of nurses as against patients too. Based on this, the paper, among other issues, touched on the permissible actions which a nurse can take against an unruly or violent patient in the course of nurse-patient relationship. Accordingly, The paper adopted the doctrinal research methodology and made use of primary and secondary sources with reliance on the analysis an interpretation of statutes and legal doctrines as well as judicial decisions, text books, journal articles, online materials and policy papers. The work observed that legal regulation in the nursing profession is a clarion-call to nurses that every professional conduct should be undertaken with regard to prevailing legal rules. This necessarily entails the need for nurses to be reasonably conversant with the pertinent rules affecting their profession. In ths light, the paper recommended that some sort of continual self-education and development on the part of nurses are desirable. As such the paper stated that professionalization of nursing both in its practice and in its achieving professional status require knowledge of the law and its relation to professional responsibility and development.

Keywords

Law, caregiver, nurse, patient, relationship

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How to Cite

Kelvin Bribena PhD (2025). Law and the Caregiver: A Review of Nurse-Patient Relationship. SIAR-Global Journal of Medicine & Pharmaceutical Review, Vol. 1, No. 1. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17117241

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Article Information

  • Type: Review Article
  • Journal: SIAR-Global Journal of Medicine & Pharmaceutical Review
  • Subject Area: Medicine
  • Published: September 13, 2025
  • Volume: 1
  • Issue: 1
  • Word Count: Not specified
  • DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17117241
  • Processing Fee: $50.00 USD

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SIAR-Global Journal of Medicine & Pharmaceutical Review

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