Can Nurses Treat Family Members or Not?

There are no laws prohibiting the treatment of family members. There are pros and cons to doing this.

Can nurses treat family members?

One of the pros is that you can use prior knowledge to help make better decisions when it comes to knowing what that patient will need.

However, one of the biggest cons, it’s hard to be objective when it comes to what that individual needs.

See also: Objective vs Subjective Data

People treat their family members a lot differently than how they would treat someone that they don’t know.

As long as nurses keep that same level of professionalism with their family members, there shouldn’t be any problem with treating family members.

Most people aren’t able to do that, but there are a select few who don’t let the relationship they have with their family outside of the hospital determine how they treat them as a patient.

A lot of family members do want to help their family so that they’re able to feel better when they leave the hospital.

As long as they follow the procedures that the hospital has set for them, they should be able to improve the lives of those patients as much as possible.

Most hospitals will tell you not to treat your family members, but there are no laws that prevent you from doing this.

There are definitely problems that can happen, but only you are the medical professional that has information outside of the hospital that can help them.

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Can nurse practitioners treat family members?

Nurse practitioners are able to treat family members in just about every country out there.

Knowing that someone is your family member makes you want to care for them more which is a great thing for their survival.

This is a high-pressure situation and you can’t afford to be the person that is going to let the bias of your relationship with that person ruin their lives.

You always need to be ready to make hard decisions, even if it ends up hurting your relationship with your family member.

The goal should be doing whatever it takes to let the family member go back to living a normal life.

See also: SMART Goals for Nursing With Examples

This isn’t always possible, but you should always go in with that goal in mind.

Keep many of the basic procedures in mind and be prepared that your family member is going to think very differently of you when this is all over.

There aren’t any rules prohibiting this, but it’s something that you shouldn’t do if the idea of that makes you uncomfortable.

However, knowing what lifestyle decisions the person makes is a good pro to making sure they know how to get the right treatment.

For example, if you know one of your family members has a drug addiction and comes into the hospital, having that knowledge is going to allow you to treat them faster.

See also: Can Registered Nurses Prescribe Medication?

Despite the massive amount of advice against treating family members, there are some key benefits to doing so.

Should nurse practitioners treat family members?

Doing this is something you should absolutely avoid unless it’s a life-or-death situation.

Even in that case, you should only do this when you know that you’re able to save your family member 100%.

There is a major conflict of interest and your family member may never forgive you if something bad happens to your family member.

There is also the chance that you may never forgive yourself if something bad happens to the family member that you are taking care of.

You may be the most intelligent and calm nurse out there, but things can change a lot when one of your family members’ lives is at stake.

For the sake of their health, you should trust your family members to a nurse that you believe is skilled.

See also: Can Nurses Do PDO Threads?

You have the benefit of finding a professional who is as good as you but doesn’t have the relationship of being a family member holding them back.

This is ultimately a good thing and a lot of the guilt that comes with taking care of a family member goes away.

They also have the benefit of treating that nurse just like anyone else and not seeing them when they go outside of the hospital.

Hopefully, this can take a lot off of your mind and lets you put more attention towards taking care of the other patients in the hospital.

You may have all kinds of emotions while dealing with the person that you’ve known for many years before treating them in the hospital, which is why you’ll be happier that you didn’t treat them.

See also: Can a Nurse Diagnose a Patient?

Conclusion: Can nurses treat family members?

This is a touchy subject for a lot of nurses because many of them really do want to be able to help these people that they’ve known for years before taking on this job.

However, the medical industry is tough and you need to be rational at all times during your stay in the hospital.

Your judgment of your family member leads you to make irrational decisions that can end up putting them in harm’s way.

There aren’t any laws against it, but it’s just something that you shouldn’t do.

You may think that your brother or sister is capable of taking a lot more pain than you thought they were capable of.

See also: How Often Does Hospice Nurse Visit?

Siblings also constantly have conflicts with each other and it would be foolish to let those conflicts continue in the hospital.

Being in the hospital also requires patients to expose themselves in ways that they would never do so in any other place.

This can lead to a lot of second-hand embarrassment and may lead that family member to be very nervous when they’re around you in any sort of casual setting.

What comforting about a patient and a nurse relationship is that it’s professional and they will likely never see themselves outside of the hospital.

At worst, this is something that can lead to you losing you getting your medical license being suspended because you made poor judgments because put your personal relationship above your professional relationship.

On the flip side, it can lead to you saving them since you have the most knowledge of that person inside the hospital.

Now you should know whether can nurses treat family members or not.

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