Chapter II: Nursing ethics

Nurses who have links with companies and establishments producing or exploiting health products or with advisory bodies working on these products are obliged to make these links known to the public when they speak at a public event, university teaching or continuing education or therapeutic education activity, in the written or audiovisual press or via any written or online publication.

Nurses are prohibited from receiving benefits in kind or in cash, in any form whatsoever, directly or indirectly, from companies providing services or producing or marketing products covered by compulsory social security schemes. However, the exceptions provided for in articles L. 1453-6 and L. 1453-7 apply to nurses.

Nurses shall ensure, in particular when participating as an expert in a body, group or other commission organised by the public authority, that they declare any interests which may call into question their impartiality and independence, or which may affect the quality of their expertise or judgement. He shall comply with the procedures organised for this purpose by the public authority.

Nurses must not use their professional position to try to obtain for themselves or for others an unjustified advantage or profit or to commit an act contrary to probity.

Nurses may not engage in any other activity, apart from care, prevention, health education, training, research or expert appraisal, which enables them to take advantage of the skills conferred on them by the regulations. They may only engage in another professional activity if such combination is compatible with the dignity and quality required by their professional practice and is not excluded by the regulations in force.

Nurses must indicate on their prescription forms and other professional documents : 1° Their surname, forenames, professional postal and electronic address, telephone number and identification number in the shared directory of professionals working in the healthcare system or, failing that, their ordinal number ; 2° If practising in an association or partnership, the names of the partners and an indication of the type of partnership; 3° His status with regard…

The nurse must not accept a mission of expertise in which his own interests are at stake, or those of one of his patients, one of his relatives, one of his friends or a group which usually calls upon his services, or if his independence is affected in any way whatsoever. No one may be both expert nurse and treating nurse for the same patient. When entrusted with a mission,…

Before undertaking any expert assessment operation, the expert nurse informs the person he is to examine of his mission and the legal framework in which his opinion is sought. The expert nurse is obliged to respect the adversarial principle throughout the expert assessment operations. In drafting his report, the expert nurse must only reveal information that is likely to provide an answer to the questions asked. Outside these limits, he…

Professionals from other Member States of the European Union or the European Economic Area who have been granted partial access to practise the profession of nurse in France underarticle L. 4002-5 of the Public Health Code, when presenting their activity to the public, in particular on a website, are required to inform the public of the list of procedures they are authorised to perform. As part of their practice, these…