Approaches to Professional Nursing Practise Essay 2022

Running head: APPROACHES TO PROFESSIONAL NURSING PRACTICE
APPROACHES TO PROFESSIONAL NURSING PRACTICE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

APPROACHES TO PROFESSIONAL NURSING PRACTICE1
Introduction
Medical errors is a major problem in health care sectors which hampers the safety of
patients. This essay describes about a medical errors caused by Ms. Mavis Lopes, a nurse
from St. George Hospital. Nymphea Anderson was a 97 year old women who was admitted
in the hospital with heart attack. Her chances of living was low. Ms Lopes administered a
drug without any recommendation from the physicians. This essay focuses on the safe
nursing practice to reduce medical errors. It also described about the consequences of
malpractice, along with importance of safe nursing practice and implementation of the safe
nursing plan in critical situations. The discussion is supported by different published
literature collected from Google Scholar and PubMed and nursing standards.
Background
The incident occurred in St George Hospital, where Mrs Anderson was admitted with
vomiting nausea urinary tract infection, dehydration and angina. She had a medical history of
hypertension and different heart diseases. The condition of Mrs Anderson was critical and
chances of survival was low. However, later her health condition got improved but she was
having difficulty in swallowing. In that moment, Ms Lopes injected a mixture of three
different drugs without the recommendation of the doctors. This leads to death of Mrs.
Anderson. The trail is going on in the court where Ms Lopes accepted that she did a
malfunction.
Consequences
Medical errors can affect both the health professionals and patient in different ways.
The medical errors can be broadly categories in two types which are major errors and minor
errors (Bari, Khan & Rathore, 2016). Minor errors are characterized as those errors which can

APPROACHES TO PROFESSIONAL NURSING PRACTICE2
harm the patient to some extent but also preventable (eg. Adverse drug effect). On the other
hand, major mistakes refers to those which can damage the condition of a patient severely
(Bari, Khan & Rathore, 2016). Several studies highlighted the consequences which can occur
due to medical errors. It can affect both the health professional and the patient. Moreover, it
has a negative impact on the hospital where the incident occurred. Several studies reported
that, consequences of medical errors can lead to death of the patient and it psychologically
affects the family members by hampering their psychological wellbeing (Makary, & Daniel,
2016). In case of nurses, the consequences of the medical error can also induce physiological
conditions such as self-doubt, stress, guilt and depression. In case of Ms Lopes, the court
procedure can affect her career and she can lose her job. This can also affect the quality of the
hospital (Makary, & Daniel, 2016).
Nursing plan and Safe practice
Nursing and Midwifery board of Australia (2019), describes several standard for
nursing practice, among those one of the important standard is development of a plan for
nursing practice. The first step to develop a nursing plan is to understand about the goal
(Hayes, Jackson, Davidson & Power, 2015). In this case, the goal is to reduce the chances of
the medical errors in nursing practice. Several published literatures reported different causes
of medical errors in nursing such as inadequate knowledge, stress, memory lapses,
incomplete patient information etc. (Parry, Barriball & While, 2015). Ms Lopes injected the
drug without any recommendation of a physician. It is understood that she did not have
adequate knowledge about the health condition of the patient. NSQHS medication safety
standards (2019), describes to record the medical history of the patient. Ms Lopes was most
probably unaware of the medical history of Mrs Anderson which is a vital aspect of this
medical error. Therefore, to provide a safe nursing care plan it is important to have adequate
knowledge of the situation and the nurses need to perform critical thinking and also need to