Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK.
Health Soc Care Community. 2013 May;21(3):271-82. doi: 10.1111/hsc.12014. Epub 2013 Feb 5.
To ensure acceptable practice standards both doctors and social workers should draw on relevant legal rules when reaching professional judgements concerning, for instance, children requiring protection, people with severe mental distress and adults at risk, information sharing, consent to intervention and service user involvement in their care and treatment. Many practitioners use the law to maintain high standards of professionalism. However, research has uncovered limited awareness of legal rules and poor standards of health and social care. Academic benchmarks and practice requirements for health and social care professions centrally position legal knowledge for secure decision-making. Model curricula exist. However, the outcomes of the taught curriculum on students' confidence in their legal knowledge and skills have been relatively overlooked. This article introduces the concept of legal literacy, a distillation of knowledge, understanding, skills and values that enables practitioners to connect relevant legal rules with their professional practice, to appreciate the roles and duties of other practitioners and to communicate effectively across organisational boundaries. It presents the outcomes for a 2006-2009 study of 1154 UK medical and 638 social work students of their law learning for practice, response rates of 46% and 68%. Significant differences were found between medical and social work students' attitudes towards the law, and in their self-ratings of legal knowledge and skills. Confidence levels were low and anxiety high, especially among medical students, although law teaching had some positive outcomes on knowledge and skill development. Social work and medical students associated different themes with the law, the latter especially foregrounding ethics, negligence and liability, which could affect inter-professional working. Students are not fully prepared for legally literate practice, with a consequent need to review the time allocated for, and the content of law learning and the subsequent availability of continuing professional development.
为了确保可接受的实践标准，医生和社会工作者在做出涉及保护儿童、严重精神困扰者和处于危险中的成年人、信息共享、干预同意以及服务使用者参与其护理和治疗等专业判断时，都应参考相关法律规定。许多从业者利用法律来保持高标准的专业精神。然而，研究发现，他们对法律规则的认识有限，健康和社会关怀的标准也很差。健康和社会关怀专业的学术基准和实践要求将法律知识置于安全决策的核心位置。已经存在模范课程。然而，关于学生对法律知识和技能的信心的教学课程的结果相对被忽视了。本文介绍了法律素养的概念，这是一种知识、理解、技能和价值观的提炼，使从业者能够将相关法律规则与他们的专业实践联系起来，理解其他从业者的角色和职责，并在组织边界内进行有效的沟通。它介绍了对 2006-2009 年英国 1154 名医学和 638 名社会工作学生的法律学习实践的研究结果，回应率分别为 46%和 68%。医学和社会工作学生对法律的态度以及他们对法律知识和技能的自我评估存在显著差异。信心水平较低，焦虑感较高，尤其是医学学生，尽管法律教学对知识和技能发展有一些积极的影响。社会工作和医学学生将不同的主题与法律联系起来，后者尤其突出了伦理、疏忽和责任，这可能会影响到专业间的合作。学生并没有为具有法律素养的实践做好充分准备，因此需要重新审查法律学习的时间分配、内容以及后续的持续专业发展机会。
