CMA Professional Ethics & Scope of Practice 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Mandatory reporting laws require midwifery assistants to report which of the following to authorities?
- A patient's financial difficulties
- Suspected child abuse or neglect (Correct answer)
- A patient's marital problems
- Disagreements between family members
Correct answer: Suspected child abuse or neglect
All US states have mandatory reporting laws requiring healthcare workers to report reasonable suspicion of child abuse or neglect to child protective services.
Question 2: Professional boundaries in the midwifery assistant role prohibit which of the following?
- Greeting a patient by name
- Entering into a personal romantic relationship with a current patient (Correct answer)
- Providing emotional support during labor
- Explaining what to expect during a procedure
Correct answer: Entering into a personal romantic relationship with a current patient
Sexual or romantic relationships with patients violate professional boundaries, create a power imbalance, and are grounds for disciplinary action.
Question 3: A CMA receives a gift from a grateful patient. The most ethically appropriate response is to:
- Accept it without comment
- Refuse all expressions of gratitude firmly
- Use institutional policy as guidance, typically accepting only small token gifts and declining valuable ones (Correct answer)
- Ask the patient for a larger gift instead
Correct answer: Use institutional policy as guidance, typically accepting only small token gifts and declining valuable ones
Most professional guidelines allow accepting small token gifts that do not influence care, while valuable gifts should be declined to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest.
Question 4: Documentation in patient medical records should always be:
- Written in advance to save time
- Objective, accurate, timely, and legible (Correct answer)
- Omit negative findings to avoid liability
- Shared freely with all hospital staff
Correct answer: Objective, accurate, timely, and legible
Medical records must be objective, accurate, completed in a timely manner, and legible to ensure continuity of care and legal defensibility.
Question 5: Cultural competence in midwifery care requires that a CMA:
- Apply the same approach to all patients regardless of cultural background
- Recognize and respect diverse cultural beliefs related to birth and postpartum practices (Correct answer)
- Ignore cultural preferences that differ from clinical standards
- Only care for patients of the same cultural background
Correct answer: Recognize and respect diverse cultural beliefs related to birth and postpartum practices
Cultural competence involves acknowledging and accommodating patients' cultural beliefs about childbirth to provide respectful, patient-centered care.
Question 6: A CMA is asked to witness a patient's informed consent signature. This means the CMA attests that:
- The patient understands every detail of the procedure
- The patient signed the form voluntarily and appeared competent (Correct answer)
- The provider explained all risks adequately
- The CMA agrees with the patient's decision
Correct answer: The patient signed the form voluntarily and appeared competent
As a witness to a consent signature, the CMA only attests that the patient signed voluntarily and appeared to have decision-making capacity — not that full education was given.
CMA Professional Ethics & Scope of Practice 2
Mandatory reporting laws require midwifery assistants to report which of the following to authorities?