Page 154 - Human Rights

5.1 Right to health.

States should ensure that the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health
is respected, protected and fulfilled.

• Governments should ensure that adequate levels of nurses and midwives are trained and

employed and that all parts of the country are adequately served by trained personnel.

• Where health services, including nursing services, are in the private sector, governments should
nevertheless ensure that everyone have access to good quality health care.

5.2 Professional regulation and responsibilities

While governments should not take a “hands on” approach to the management of nursing at

clinical level they should provide an enabling environment in which effective, secure and

professional work can be carried out by nurses to the benefit of the community.

• Governments should ensure that draft legislation regulating the employment of nurses and
midwives, their functions and working conditions, is reviewed by nursing

organizations and adequately reflects the skills and professionalism of nursing personnel.

• Ensure that nursing and its regulation is carried out in a transparent and accountable way with

limitations on openness applying only where strictly necessary for reasons of protecting the

legitimate privacy of staff, patients or third parties.

• Maximize the extent to which nurses are managed by and accountable to senior health

professionals for their clinical work.

• Nurses working in “closed” environments such as prisons or other institutions should be
encouraged to undertake periods of rotation in other clinical environments.

5.2.1 Ethical behavior

Nurses should work in an environment in which human rights are institutionalized and a

fundamental part of the value system. Governments should:

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