Professional Practice, Ethics and Jordanian Health Regulation
What this domain tests
Professional Practice, Ethics and Jordanian Health Regulation tests the legal frame around midwifery - licensure, scope, consent, confidentiality, documentation and referral - and how to resolve the ethical conflicts that arise on a maternity unit.
Core rules
- Regulator. The Jordanian Nursing Council (JNC), established under the Nursing and Midwifery Practice Law No. 42 of 2002, licenses nurses and midwives, defines scope through its bylaws, accredits education programmes and handles professional discipline. Practising without a current JNC licence is an offence.
- Re-licensure. A current practising licence tied to continuing professional development and a defined competence framework; the midwife works within documented scope and refers outside it.
- Scope. The midwife independently manages normal pregnancy, labour, birth and the puerperium, and performs episiotomy, perineal repair and immediate newborn care. Operative delivery, caesarean section and complicated cases require obstetric referral.
- Consent. Valid consent needs capacity, information (risks, benefits, alternatives) and voluntariness. It is a process, not a signature; a woman in labour can consent to care, but irreversible decisions need unhurried antenatal counselling.
- Confidentiality. Share information only with the woman's consent, or where disclosure is legally required - communicable disease notification, child protection, court order.
- Documentation. Contemporaneous, factual, signed and timed; the record is a legal document and must never be back-dated.
Worked example
During active labour a woman is asked to sign consent for tubal ligation "while we are in there" at caesarean. Correct response: decline to take consent in labour, explain that sterilisation is permanent, and arrange documented antenatal counselling so the decision is made without duress. The midwife's role here is advocacy, not convenience.
Traps that cost marks
Witnessing a consent you did not explain; discussing cases in corridors or on social media; working outside scope because no doctor is present; assuming a husband's or family member's consent replaces the woman's.