[Regulated nursing autonomy and professional responsibility: prehospital emergency care as a paradigm of the legal evolution of the nursing profession].

UNLABELLED: . Regulated nursing autonomy and professional responsibility: prehospital emergency care as a paradigm of the legal evolution of the nursing profession.

INTRODUCTION

The evolution of Italian nursing has expanded the competencies deployed in practice without fully defining the juridical configuration of advanced professional autonomy, especially in regulated organisational settings.

OBJECTIVE

To propose regulated nursing autonomy as an interpretive category of professional action, using prehospital emergency care as the paradigm of a model in which nursing knowledge becomes legally identifiable professional conduct.

METHODS

The paper develops a legal-theoretical analysis based on professional legislation, regulation of time-dependent clinical networks, nursing literature on decision-making, and reflection on healthcare liability.

RESULTS

Prehospital emergency services show that nurses do not replicate the medical act, rather they make care-related decisions within predefined activation criteria. Responsibility arises not only from the final act, but also from the professional judgment through which the case is qualified as falling within the area of intervention entrusted to the nurse. The new clinical specialisations further strengthen the need for a more complete legal status.

CONCLUSIONS

Health law should not limit itself to reconstructing liability ex post when error occurs. It must describe the expression of advanced nursing practice, distinguishing professional roles without rigidly fixing their boundaries and recognising the role of organisational dimension as a key mechanism for governing autonomy.