Abstract
Objective:
To describe the ethical violations involving legal actions in ethical lawsuits (ELs) judged by the Regional Nursing Council of São Paulo (Coren/SP).
Method:
Descriptive study with a quantitative approach. The sample consisted of documents related to 169 professionals tried in 2012 and 2013 at Coren-SP for cases involving legal actions.
Results:
Professionals with complete high school were more involved in lawsuits (71%), most professionals were Nursing Assistants (46.12%) and early career professionals. The occurrences described as legal actions were: homicide; bodily injury; abandonment of disabled person; maltreatment; defamation; theft; embezzlement; swindling; abuse of corpse; rape; sexual abuse; sexual harassment; forgery; corruption; counterfeiting, contamination, adulteration or alteration of product intended for therapeutic or medicinal purposes; illegal practice of medicine; forgery of public document; use of false document; identity fraud; peculation; loss, fraud or destruction of a public book or document; and misdemeanors related to the organization of work as an illegal exercise of profession. Most of the occurrences had a procedural nature and resulted in death or bodily injury, with a greater incidence of negligent acts. As for the attitudinal occurrences, the illegal exercise of profession had a higher incidence, followed by forgery of documents. As for the outcome of the trials, 63.3% of the professionals involved were found guilty and the most applied penalty was a warning (21.5%).
Conclusion:
The results of the study were extremely important to identify the occurrences involving legal actions and, consequently, the need to deepen the discussion about ethical issues in the daily nursing practice.
Keywords
Professional partisse/ethics; Crime; Nursing, team; Codes of ethics; Liability, legal; Professional review organizations