Safety or Legal Responsibility in Nursing

Running Head: SAFETY OR OF LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY
SAFETY OR OF LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

SAFETY OR OF LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY
1
Introduction:
The primary aim of the nursing in the healthcare is to provide quality care to the patient.
According to Smolowitz et al. (2015), each and every nurse has certain roles and responsibilities
that they should follow while handling the patient. This essay primarily focusses on the legal and
safety responsibilities of the nurse in order to deliver safe management to patient. According to
the Nursing and Midwifery Board of nursing (2019), it is the responsibility of the nurse to
deliver safe care to patient. The discussion includes the critical analysis of the responsibility and
right of the registered nurse in the peri-opeartive clinical areas of practice in order to provide safe
care ( in terms of both physical and emotional) by considering the legal rights of the patient.
Discussion:
Perioperative nursing revolves around the care of the patient, before, during and after
the operation. The primary responsibilities of the peri-operative are to safe and quality care to
surgical patient by appropriately assessing, arrangement, executing and evaluating the care (Gao,
Plummer & Williams, 2017).
According to Smolowitz et al. (2015), each and every registered nurse in the health care
setting has the responsibility to offer harmless care to the patient. the legal responsibilities of the
nurse includes, identifying the legal issue associated with the patient, educate the patient and the
other nurse practitioner about the legal issue, reporting unsafe practice to the healthcare
authorities and provide the according interventions. In the peri-operative clinical area, safe care
is essential as a small error can lead to infection or can hamper the result of the underwent
surgery.

SAFETY OR OF LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY
2
According to the Nursing and Midwifery Board of nursing (2019), standard 6, the
registered nurse should deliver appropriate, safe and ensures responsive nursing practice of
quality. As per the nursing standard, the registered nurse should practice in accord with the all
the guidelines, policies, regulations, standard and the legislation to gain enhanced health
outcome of the patient.
During my clinical placement, I was assigned to wok under a registered nurse in order
to enhance my peri-operative clinical practice to deliver best excellence care to patient. At the
time, I was asked to look over an older patient recently had a surgery and along with that has a
medical history of hypertension and diabetes. The patient has been prescribed to intake an
NSAIDS for the inflammation and the pain (Derry et al., 2016). While, I was assessing the vital
signs of the patient, an another registered nurse came and administered the recommended
medications without even assessing the health condition of the patient properly. She had
increased the dose of the medication as prescribed and administered it to the patient. I tried to
interrupt her but kept silence as she has more experience and knowledge than me. At evening
when I went to look for the health condition of the patient, the patient was breathing heavily. I
reported it to the registered nurse and after assessing the patient, it is identified that the current
health condition of the patient is due to the medication error.
The above incident violates the rules and responsibilities of the registered nurse.
Standard 4 of the registered nursing states that, it is the responsibility of the nurse to
comprehensively conduct the patient assessment and after that only the treatment is provided to
the patient. However, in the above case, the registered nurse have avoided conducting the health
assessment of the patient before administrating the medication and leads to medication error.