Professional Accountability Case Study 2022

Running head: PROFESSIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY 1
Professional accountability
Name of the Student:
Name of supervisor:
Institution Affiliation:
Date due:

PROFESSIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY 2
Actions on the part of the Rn that contributed to adverse outcome for the patient
In the case of Ms. Tammy Jocobsen, she was found to have behaved in a way that
constituted professional misconduct. This, therefore, resulted in the suspension of Ms.
Tammy as a registered nurse for six months. Ms. Tammy used a syringe driver to
administer medication to patients. The syringe should not have been used to
administer the drugs because it could have resulted in an overdose, and it was against
the standards on the administration of medicines. Ms. Tammy had treated two patients
in the year 2010 when she was working at the Brookfield Village Care Centre as a
registered nurse and clinical nurse consultant. During this period, Ms. Tammy advised
the first RN to consider using a syringe driver to keep the patient under her care
comfortable because the prescriptions which had been made for administering four
drugs were not known. The decision made by Mrs. Tammy is questionable and
unprofessional since there are no facts to show any indication of how the use of a
syringe driver to keep the patient comfortable could help administer the drugs to the
patients. Each type of medicine was to be administered to the patients within varying
periods of between 6 to 8 hours. Ms. Tammy could, therefore, not explain the
rationale behind the decision that she made to use syringe drivers despite the
prescribed medication not requiring it. To convert the prescriptions to the standard
period over which all the four drugs would be administered simultaneously, it would
require complex pharmacological calculations to achieve the right dosage as
prescribed for each drug. Ms. Tammy could, therefore, not show evidence of how she
determined the mixture of the drugs used for both patient DO and E1. This, therefore,
means that there is a possibility that the correct mix of the drugs was not applied and
could have caused adverse effects to the patients.

PROFESSIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY 3
The other action which resulted in this decision is that even after Ms. Tammy,
together with another RN, reviewed the necessary documents advising on the
administration of the drugs, she renewed the syringe and continued administering the
medications through the same process. After reviewing the documentation, one would
have expected that she would stop using the syringe drivers and used the correct
procedure of administering the drugs, but that was not the case. Even after the third
RN raised a concern with her regarding this issue, she advised her to decide what to
do with the syringe driver based on the RN`s observation of the patient. This,
therefore, shows that despite obtaining the needed information regarding the
administration of the drugs, Ms. Tammy was still willing to go against the medication
orders. Ms. Jacobsen also repeated this situation with patient E1 and hence showing
deliberate actions of professional misconduct.
The other action which contributed to her suspension is that she admitted
withholding fluids and nutrition from the patient DO without any medical order
requiring her to do so. This could have risked the life of the patient since the lack of
nutrition could lead to the health of the patient deteriorating. Therefore, the patient
was denied reasonable clinical care despite there being evidence of improvement and
the documented proof of hunger and thirst, but the patient was denied fluids.
What Ms. Jacobsen failed to do
Ms. Jacobsen was unable to make an effort to find the necessary documents
regarding how the prescribed drugs should have been administered. She could have
done some research to find out the right way of administering the medicine instead of
making assumptions that could have endangered the life of the patient. Ms. Jacobsen
also did not stop the use of a syringe driver even after finding the documents