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Ethical Issues and Impact of Nurse-Patient Ratios

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Ethical Issues and Impact of Nurse-Patient Ratios
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HomeANA PeriodicalsOJINColumnsEthicsInterstate Nursing Practice and Regulation
Ethics: Interstate Nursing Practice and Regulation: Ethical Issues for the 21st Century

Mary Cipriano Silva, PhD, RN, FAAN
Ruth Ludwick, PhD, RN,C

"The ethics incorporated into good nursing practice are more important than knowledge of the law; practicing ethically saves the effort of trying to know all the laws." (Hall, 1996, p.2)

In OJIN topic Multistate Licensure: Who Owns Your Care?, we weighed the pros and cons of interstate practice laws for nursing in the United States and its territories as we embark on a new era of licensure regulation. It is incumbent on us as nurses, both nationally and internationally, to dialogue about ethical issues that may come from entering into practice without traditional time and space boundaries.

The predominant model in the United States is that nurses are licensed in the state they practice. Nurses who hold dual or more licenses have successfully passed the licensure exam in one state and applied for reciprocity in one or more other states. In



References: Hall, J. (1996). Nursing ethics and law. Philadelphia: Saunders. Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (1994). Principles of biomedical ethics (4th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Hutcherson, C., & Willamson, S. (1999). Nursing regulation for the new millennium: The mutual recognition model. Online Journal Of Issues In Nursing. Available: http://www.nursingworld.org/ojin/topic9. Keywords: Ethics, interstate practice, nursing, regulation Silva, Mary Cipriano and Ludwick, Ruth (July 2, 1999) © 1999 Online Journal of Issues in Nursing Article published July 2, 1999

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