Nursing Malpractice and Legal Consequences
Added on 2020-04-07
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LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN NURSINGNURSING AND MIDWIFE COUNCIL NSW CASE STUDYINTRODUCTIONThe council is a governmental organization that was formed in the year 2010 after the dismantling of the Nurses and Midwifes Board. The board’s mission is to protect public safety and maintain professional standards through the effective regulation of nurses and midwives and the development of collaborative relationships. To achieve its mission, the organization is responsible for assisting and managing around 14 professional councils in NSW. The council also works hand in hand with the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission to manage any complaints reported about the NSW health practitioners as well as the registered students in the health practitioner program. According to Scanlon et al, 2016, the council helps the health nursesand midwifes to implement the laws, work ethics and quality standards in their profession as much as possible. The main objective of this council is to increase the nurses’ or midwives’ trust and confidence in their work areas.PROFESSIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY OF NURSES AND MIDWIVESSome of the activities that the nurse on duty from 1700HRS on 11 January 2013 should have done are:To make frequent check-ups on the patient’s health condition. This would have helped the nurse to realize the immediate changes of the patient’s condition. According to the nurses rules and laws, there should be thorough, frequent but regular and effective patient check-ups (Benton et al, 2013).The nurse should not have taken too much time to check patients A’s condition. For instance, patient A’s condition worsened after 20minutes but it took almost one hour to notify the nurse. The longer it took, the worse the conditions became.The nurse should have recorded and documented the patient’s condition after observation (Kingwell et al, 2017). This means that the nurse had no point of reference if she were asked to provide evidence or if she wanted to refer the patient to the doctor.2
The nurse failed to notify the doctor about the patient’s condition early enough (Foley et al, 2017). This was against the rules and laws governing the hospital especially the shifts that take place from 1720HRS that states that a doctor should be notified when a patient’s health conditionworsens especially from 1720HRS and beyond. The Nurse therefore failed to notify patient A’s doctor which against the hospital rules.The patient failed to make a plan of action for patient A, even after observing that her condition was worsening. The lack of plan to improve patient A’s health condition led to its deterioration and later death. The nurse should have come up with a plan to manage the patient’s health condition to avoid it from deteriorating (Ross et al, 2017).During her shift, the nurse decided to wait for the doctor to arrive even when she knew that patient A’s condition was becoming worse. The nurse knew that it would be long before the doctor arrived to check on the patients (during his normal working hours) but she still waited until he arrived. The doctor did not have any idea about the patient’s condition at that time, courtesy of the nurse on duty. Apart from failing to notify the doctor, she did not try to make the patient’s condition better. She failed to make the patient feel comfortable and better which is oneissue that led to further and faster deterioration hence death.PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS BREACHEDJust like any other profession, the Nurse and Midwife practice has created and implemented some work ethics and standards that govern their profession. These standards are however made by the NMBD organizations. These standards are meant to guide and direct the nurses and midwives towards effective and proficient practice and competency (Fisher, 2017). The following are some of the standards that were breached in the case study:Standards Guiding Plan DevelopmentThis standard relates to the ability of a nurse to develop a plan of action during the practice to help the patient get better. The plan is supposed to focus on ways and methods to improve the health condition of the patient. Also, the standard expects this plan to be documented and communicated to other people responsible e.g. doctors or other nurses. The nurse on duty from 1700HRS on 11th January 2013 failed to create a plan for patient A, even after she observed her condition deteriorating. This was a breach of standards which later led to the death of the patient.3
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