NMC Code Section 15: Help in Emergencies

Section 15 of the Code covers emergency response.

“Always offer help if an emergency arises in your practice setting or elsewhere.”

Sub-clauses:

• 15.1 Only act in an emergency within the limits of your knowledge and competence.
• 15.2 Arrange, wherever possible, for emergency care to be accessed and provided promptly.
• 15.3 Take account of your own safety, the safety of others and the availability of other options for providing care.

Section 15 is wider in scope than people sometimes realise. It covers both on-duty and off-duty emergencies. A nurse witnessing a collapse in a supermarket carpark has the same professional duty to help as one on a ward.

What it means in practice

Help in an emergency means:

• Calling 999 or summoning the clinical team.
• Providing BLS (basic life support) until paramedics arrive.
• Maintaining the casualty’s airway, applying pressure to bleeds, supporting breathing where trained.
• Reassuring the casualty and bystanders.
• Handing over to the paramedics or clinical team with a clear summary.

Help does not mean:

• Performing procedures you haven’t been trained for.
• Putting yourself at significant personal risk.
• Continuing to provide care indefinitely when better-qualified help is available.

The principle: do what you can, get help fast, hand over cleanly.

Common breaches

Section 15 breaches in fitness-to-practise cases are uncommon. When they appear they tend to involve:

• Failure to act when an emergency was clearly present: passing by, claiming off-duty status, treating someone else’s responsibility as not your problem.
• Acting beyond competence in an emergency: attempting interventions the registrant wasn’t trained for and causing harm.
• Failing to summon help when the emergency exceeded the registrant’s capacity.

The majority of nurses respond well in emergencies. The Section 15 breaches that surface are usually outliers.

CPD that maps to Section 15

• Basic Life Support (BLS): annual refresh expected in clinical roles.
• Immediate Life Support (ILS): for nurses in higher-acuity settings.
• Advanced Life Support (ALS): for senior clinical nurses and resus team members.
• Paediatric BLS: for paediatric and emergency department nurses.
• First aid: for non-clinical contexts.
• Trauma response: for nurses in trauma centres or pre-hospital roles.

BLS is foundational. Most registrants refresh annually as part of mandatory training.

Common reflective account themes

Strong Section 15 accounts describe:

• A specific emergency you responded to and your role in it.
• A learning experience from a resus or rapid response that changed your approach.
• An off-duty incident where you applied your training.
• A reflection after a BLS refresher on what you’d do differently.

Where Section 15 connects to other sections

• Section 13 (limits of competence): operative in emergencies too.
• Section 19 (reduce risk of harm): emergency response is harm reduction.

The next chapter covers Code Section 16: acting on concerns and safety risks.