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This article reviews legislative initiatives that mandate nurses to report patients, families, and clinicians to law enforcement. Most recently, these laws target transgender and gender diverse (TGD) youth and people seeking abortion. In this article, we examine the ethics of such laws through professional ethical codes. Furthermore, through a biopolitical lens, we critically analyze examples of nurses' participation in complying with laws that harm patients. Finally, we discuss the damage these laws have on the nursing profession and assert the necessity of a resituating of professional ethics that considers the complexity of nursing care amidst increasingly blatant state-sanctioned violence.

In this article, we present a case study that illustrates the nurse’s obligation in applying clinical judgment in determining the applicability and appropriateness of carrying out a standing order, and how nurses can navigate institutional policies that reinforce a gender binary and heteronormative ideals of womanhood while depriving the client of their autonomy. The case study also reveals some of the challenges transgender, nonbinary, and other gender expansive people may experience when health care institutions have standing orders that are not inclusive of all gender identities.

The purpose of this article is to highlight the essentials for facilitating gender-affirming nursing encounters for transgender, nonbinary, and other gender expansive (TNGE) people. The authors illustrate what constitutes as gender-affirming nursing encounters by characterizing gender-affirming approaches to conducting and documenting a nursing assessment and describing techniques to overcome institutional-level challenges that may hinder a nurse’s ability to establish gender-affirming therapeutic relationships with TNGE people. The authors also provide strategies that nurses can use to improve their health care organization and interprofessional collaborative practice to create psychologically and physically safe health care spaces for TNGE people.