University

of Santo Tomas
College of Nursing
NCM 105 Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing

Legal issues in Psychiatric Nursing
Confidentiality of information
Illegal confinement
Failure to obtain consents for medication
and other treatment
Inadequate treatment
Medication errors
Breach of duty to warn of threatened
suicide or harm to others

Patients Rights

Right to communicate with people outside
the hospital
Right to keep personal belongings
Right to enter into contractual relationship
Right to education
Right to pursuit or file legal case
Right to privacy
Privileged communication
Circle of confidentiality
Protecting a third party
Right to informed consent
Right to treatment
Right to refuse treatment
Right to treatment in the least restrictive
setting
RIGHT TO REFUSE TREATMENT
Legally, involuntarily admitted patients do
not lose their right to give informed consent
to the administration of psychotropic meds
Nurses must be sure that coaxing does not
lead to forcing medication on the patient
Hiding medications in food or liquid when
patient refuses to take them constitute
forcing the patient.
Forcing medications is counterproductive
when trying to establish nurse-patient
relationship
RIGHT TO FREEDOM FROM RESTRAINTS AND
SECLUSION

Restraints -Limiting a persons movement or
access to his or her own body.

Seclusion - The process of isolating a person

in a room in which they are physically
prevented from leaving
Nurses are more apt to look for alternate
strategies
Valuable are the interventions that prevent
the escalation of the patients escalation in
behavior or loss of control.

ASSAULT, BATTERY AND FALSE IMPRISONMENT

Assault apprehension of physical contact
Battery actual physical contact
False imprisonment unlawful restraint of
an individuals personal liberty or the
unlawful restraint or confinement of an
individual

COMMITMENT ISSUES

Voluntary
Involuntary

Competence to comprehend
An individual who has the legal capacity to
consent to mental health treatment refuses
to do so.
Criteria:
o dangerous to self or others because of
mental illness
o With evidence that a person is mentally
ill and dangerous
o Gravely disabled

CATEGORIES
FOR
INVOLUNTARY
COMMITMENT

Emergency care
Short term observation and treatment
Long term commitment (3, 6, or 12
months)
When a nurse has no legal basis of
continuously confining or detaining the
patient, the nurse should adhere to the
legal time constraints or to legally release
the patient.