Professional Accountability and Patient Safety

Running head: PROFESSIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND PATIENT SAFETY
Professional Accountability and Patient Safety
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1Professional Accountability and Patient Safety
Introduction:
Breaching and illegal activities in the healthcare setting can lead to legal consequences such as,
fine, suspension and imprisonment. The aim of this essay is to evaluate the adverse effect of
illegal activities such as providing false entry and departure, absence during the shift timing or
absence if attentiveness if present. The patient in the case study are the female patient, which are
under consultation of a medical practitioner. The nurse had undertaken to act as a chaperone with
the medical practitioner under the medical board of Australia. On 23rd of September 2016, she
was referred to tribunal by the NMBA (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia ) in the case
of breaching the undertaking chaperone. She herself admitted that, she had been breaching the
chaperone undertaking from quite a long time. She admitted that, she had provided misleading
log about the chaperone to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. She has also
provided wrong information regarding the entry and departure. The tribunal considered this as an
illegal behaviour and suspended her for 2 months and imposed a fine of $2000 (NMBA 2019).
Along with that, tribunal also imposed to undertake further education on the legal and ethics
obligation in nursing on her (AHPRA 2019).
Adverse action of the registered nurse:
In this case study, Ms Moyle had commenced with Medical Board of Australia that she
will act as a chaperone for a doctor at his consultation with the female patients. During the
period, she admitted on her own that she breached the chaperone undertaking that was
committed by her. She had also admitted that she was involved in the conduct of falsification of
departure and entries.

2Professional Accountability and Patient Safety
Due to the false entries and grave departure, she was not able to attend the consultant meeting
between the female patient and medical practitioner. Hence, she was not able to understand the
pain and worries of the patient. She also admitted that she mislead the AHPRA (Australian
Health Practitioner Regulation Agency) logs and the communication procedure. Due to such
unethical action, her registration was suspended for 2 months by the tribunal. Along with that, a
fine of $2000 and condition of getting education on the legal and ethics obligations in nursing
was also imposed on her (NMBA 2019).
Ms Moyle had breached the chaperone undertaking. She remain absent or if present, does
not attend the consultation between the general practitioner and the female patient. As she was
assigned to act as a chaperone for the general practitioner, it is her duty to assist the general
practitioner during the consultant, but she was not doing her work and misleading the logs of
AHPRA (Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency ). Instead of assisting the general
practitioner, she was breaching the chaperone undertaking by providing false logs, which was
objectionable and unethical (Griffith and Tengnah, 2017). Hence she needs to learn the legal and
ethics obligation in nursing, which was imposed on her along with fine and suspension by
Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA 2019).
In the health care setting it is required to be attentive in order to get the effective
treatment. To provide the patient care, the registered nurse standard of practice formulated by
NMBA (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia) should be considered. According to NMBA
(2019), (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia), standard 1- nursed should engage
themselves in professional and therapeutic relationship with the patient. This standard will be
fulfilled if the nurse will attend the patient. However in this case, Ms Moyle was not attentive