Understanding Professional Standards of Practice

Professional Standards of Practice
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Professional Standards of Practice
Professional standards of practice in the healthcare industry are essential since they foster specialists’ competence. In particular, they show an achievable and desirable performance level against which healthcare providers can compare their actual performance. The primary purpose of the professional standards of practice is to maintain and create a clinically and safe environment for physicians and patients. For example, they help the healthcare management team to delegate tasks to specialists, develop safe working practices, create policies to safeguard patients’ privacy on social media, and ensure adequate documentation. In other words, professional standards of practice make physicians accountable for their clinical actions and decisions. Nurses, doctors, and therapists are the three healthcare disciplines that the paper focuses on to illustrate the importance of the professional standards of practice.
The primary reason for choosing nurses, doctors, and therapists is because these healthcare disciplines are the most utilized by many individuals. Besides, these healthcare professionals interact with many people and without appropriate professional standards of practice, they are likely to affect the quality of medical services adversely. Some of the organizations that set and review doctors’ professional standards of practice are the American Medical Association (AMA) and the National Health Service (NHS). The code of ethics are developed based on the trends, challenges, and changes experienced in the medical field. Specifically, maintaining high professional standards protects doctors from encountering mismanaged or unfair performance management protocols (Ataullah & Livesey, 2020). In that case, physicians develop a close relationship with their patients based on trust. One of the current and primary issues in the healthcare industry is the access to patients’ data by unauthorized personnel. This problem can be addressed through doctors’ professional standards of practice by restricting physicians from sharing their authorization and authentication details with others. Additionally, doctors should not use their personal devices to access patients’ databases, particularly using public networks. Consequently, setting proper professional standards can help physicians address the information breach issue by minimizing security vulnerabilities.
Another healthcare discipline comprises psychologists, counselors, or therapists. These are professionals who help individuals with mental illnesses. The professional standards of practice in this healthcare discipline are set and reviewed by the American Counseling Association (ACA), American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA), and the American Psychological Association (APA). These organizations develop rules to ensure that therapists have a safe working environment and are protected to offer the best medical services to their patients. Russell et al. (2016) depict that some of the psychosocial complications include post-traumatic stress disorder (...