Practice act

First Practice Act There are several rules and regulations that govern the conduct of the individuals in whatever fields they are in. These so-called rule books guide the behaviors of these individuals in the course of their activities. The nursing field is an example of an area of interest in this particular case. This happens to be one area in particular which has quite a lot of implications associated with it.
There have been several events in history which has brought the nursing profession under the spotlight especially in relation to some of the practices which the members of this profession have been undertaking. One such event was during the hurricane Katrina. One specific thing that came out of this is the idea of the angels of mercy. This is a phenomenon which may be understood by some. What it actually means is that a person willingly and intentionally terminates the life of a person who is under his or her care. This is the exact thing that happened during the Hurricane Katrina evacuation process. In this case it was seen that the nurses who were involved in the process took the lives of the patients under their care by administering high dosages of drugs among them morphine with the intention of ending the lives of those patients under them.
There are several motivating reasons as to why these nurses may have opted to carry out such an activity. One of the most probable among these is the aspect of mercy killing. This is where the nurses might have seen that the victims have suffered beyond help. The other reason may be for the purpose of being seen as a hero. This happens when the nurse kills the person in question and then goes ahead and puts an act that portrays his or her efforts to save them when in actual sense the person is dead.
The Hurricane Katrina event brings to light some of the expectations of the Nursing Act in relation to the acts that were carried out by the nurses. One of the primary stipulations of the act is in relation to the protection of lives as opposed to terminating them. It is more than obvious that this particular expectation was flaunted and in the course of their activities they did not uphold what the law expects of them. At the same time they brought out a moral implication to what they did. The aspect of mercy killing comes out in this particular case. It is to be noted that the lives of individuals are not to be terminated willingly or intentionally by anybody regardless of the situation. This is whether the victim is for the idea or not. These nurses did not just break the law but in actual sense also went against the Hippocratic law which governs the medicine profession. It may be argued that the magnitude of the situation at hand might have contributed to them killing the of the patients. This is majorly because all the patients could not be evacuated and some, especially the elderly, had to be killed.
References
Russell, D et al.(2006),
Serial Murder by Healthcare Professionals. Journal of Forensic Sciences (Blackwell Publishing Limited)
Holmes, Stephen & Holmes, Ronald (2009), Serial murder. Sage Publications, Inc.