CASE STUDY REFLECTION ON UNPROFESSIONAL CONDUCT

Running head: CASE STUDY REFLECTION ON UNPROFESSIONAL CONDUCT
CASE STUDY REFLECTION ON UNPROFESSIONAL CONDUCT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

CASE STUDY REFLECTION ON UNPROFESSIONAL CONDUCT
1
All healthcare practitioners ideally operate within their scope of practice, and there is
a particular code of conduct that they must follow. This essay will shed light on a specific
case study about acts of unprofessionalism in nursing practice and underline how they affect
patient safety and elaborate on my impression towards the trained professional who has
committed these errors. The essay will also provide a brief discussion on the experience I
gained as a hospital unit clerk from these events. The principal purpose of this paper is to
present five accounts of unprofessional conduct by the nursing professional in a healthcare
system and analyze those incidents as a fellow staff member of the healthcare team.
Firstly, she failed to timely document the necessary post-operative assessment and
care for a patient who had undergone surgery. She also did not convey to the caregivers
working the next shift that the patient had not received a dose of Septra yet. Secondly, on the
following day, she carelessly acted towards the same patient. She not only failed to keep a
record of vital signs but also did not thoroughly complete pain and other assessments even
when the patient exhibited febrile symptoms. For another patient, she failed to administer
Colyte, a bowel cleansing product, in preparation of colonoscopy. Thirdly, there were
complaints of incorrect dressing for Vacuum-Assisted Closure (VAC) of a wound by the
nurse, who also instructed a healthcare assistant mistakenly to feed breakfast to an NPO
patient who was awaiting surgery, later that day. She then failed to provide this information
on the prepared preoperative checklist for the operation. Fourthly, she inappropriately
documented an assessment regarding a patient’s new Central Venous Catheter (CVC) line on
a different shift. Subsequently, on the next day, she failed to administer correct dressing for
the CVC line, flushed it with a wrong solution at the wrong time and did not maintain records
of removing the jugular CVC line. Lastly, she repeatedly made errors in documenting
assessments and proper monitoring of treatments. She failed to input adequate information in
the patient admission checklist, which thereby led to disruption in further management. For