Case Study: Perioperative Nursing, Responsibilities, and Safety

This case study examines the role and responsibilities of perioperative nurses, emphasizing patient safety, legal and ethical considerations, and informed consent. It covers specialist nurses' roles in surgical care, including sterile instrument management and patient and family education. The study delves into physical and emotional safety protocols, addressing potential accidents and trauma. Legal aspects, such as common and statutory laws, are detailed, along with the importance of maintaining patient confidentiality and obtaining informed consent. The assignment also explores nurses' advocacy role and the legal repercussions of misconduct. The case study highlights the critical nature of patient-nurse relationships and the complexities of consent within the perioperative environment, emphasizing nursing ethics and competency in patient care.

Running head: PERIOPERATIVE NURSING 1
Case study: Perioperative Nursing
Name
Institution

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Specialist nurses are dedicated to a particular area of nursing. Their work is to care for
patients suffering from long-term conditions and diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and chronic
heart failure. They offer direct care and offer education to patients on how they can manage their
diseases. In most cases, people prefer to hire a specialist nurse to attend to their patients instead
of having the patient hospitalized (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA). 2016).
The perioperative nurse is a specialist nurse who is involved in surgical care. Perioperative
nurses work closely to the surgical patient, their family, and other health officers. They help in
sterile instruments and items to be used for nursing. They are also responsible for managing
nursing care by observing the surgical team from abroader perspective. Safety of nurses and
patients in the hospital is important. Emotional safety originates from within us. Just like any
other person, patients and other medical personal require both physical and emotional safety.
Physical safety for patients is important since most of the medical activities are carried out
physically (Lindwall & Von Post. 2018). Accidents are one of the physical related issues that do
occur. An accident can be of any kind either fire or water. Therefore, for a patient, there must be
a safeguard from any physical damage or accidents. The patients who have undergone surgery
when perioperative nurses are attending to them should ensure that they do not get involved in an
accident that will cause them more pain. First aid box is important for any physical safety. It is
granted when a patient is involved in any accident physically; first aid is of most important
because it will help to ease the pain as the patient is taken for more attention from the specialist.
These safety-related issues do cut across both patients and medical professionals.
Human beings are emotional beings. It is widely known that emotional safety is
important in times of war, disagreements, and divorce. However, emotional safety is important at

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all times for both patients and health specialists. Trauma is one of the emotional safety-related
issues that is not only linked to emotions but also physical (Australian Commission on Safety
and Quality in Health Care [ACSQHC]. 2019). When a specialist and in this case perioperative
nurse is involved in trauma this may result in poor performance in the workplace. Life
threatening diseases can lead to trauma for most patients and therefore it is important to
safeguard the patients from such trauma by encouraging them they are going to get well soon
(Schwam. 2018). Love is also an emotional safety-related issue it ensures that patients get it right
that they have people that care for them and hence they are not worried about their health.
Reporting any violent encounter is one of the strategies to maintain physical safety in the
hospital both for the patients and the perioperative nurses (Spry, 2016). Reporting will ensure
that there is awareness of that act and the health professional find a better way to attend to the
same patients or how to continue working in the same environment. Identification of the main
risks and preventing the same risk from happening (Stobinski, 2018). There is a legal
requirement that confines how a perioperative nurse carries out their activities. Some laws
govern the responsibilities of the perioperative nurse.
Common law determines that the health care providers provide health care with the same
standards as stated in the constitutions and the legal requirement of the health. Statutory law state
that anyone registered with any health care body when done anything contrarily to the law
should be charged as a criminal. The perioperative nurse responsibility is to ensure that the
concern patient records are well obtained, recorded and documented in the health record of a
respective hospital. In case an injury occurs, it will be easy to show that the nurse did comply
with the policy and procedures of the institution. The perioperative nursing responsibility is to
maintain the highest level of competency in the nursing practice. They are obligated to maintain

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a high level of confidentiality as far as the patient's information is concerned. Giving consent of
the treatment. It is the responsibility of the perioperative nurse to give the informed and
procedural of the patient's ideal illness (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA).
2018). They have the consent to check and ensure that the patient has been given consent of
treatment.
They are legally responsible for protecting the rights of the patients. To ensure that there
is no violation of any set rules and regulation governing the patients. They are also responsible
for justifying public confidence and trust (Taylor et al. 2013). They must prove to be trusted by
any person in the society regarding their health and that of their families. Perioperative nurses are
responsible for advocacy. They provide information that is meaningful to the patients for them to
make an informed and sound decision. Legal responsibilities of the employees of the
perioperative nurses are bodies like the Nurse regulatory Authority, which is responsible for
taking action against nurses who have done contrary to what is set as the governing law.
Consent is an issue integral in any patient-nurse association and offers nursing with both
practical and theoretical challenges. In the area of perioperative nursing, a consent that is
informed is gotten for anesthetic and surgical interventions. This issue is not officially bargained
for the assortment of interventions taken on to enable the most direct of surgical processes. These
may comprise of chemical or physical restraint, loosening or removal of gowns, use of
monitoring equipment moving and lifting of the patient within the recovery and environmental
area and use of analgesics (Schroeter. 2017). There is always a central discourse of unstated
consent where perioperative nursing is situated. The issue of implied consent overlays to some
extent with the earlier issue of acceptance that notified consent has been gotten. Provided that the
tasks are central to the surgical process, the suppositions of a consent that is implied as a

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broadening of consent to the surgery is central. There exists a discourse of a consent that is
implied: absolute comprehension that because the patient has entered in the operating room they
had agreed to every activity linked with their incident of surgery. Nevertheless, all this
involvements necessitate the consent of the patient.
The establishment of competency in perioperative care emphasizes a lot of nursing ethic
theory concerning consent. The manner in which nurses measure and assess competency to
consent to actions and interventions is crucial (Miller & Ingram. 2017). Varying levels of sick
individual’s competency and queries neighboring surrogate making of decisions is key. There is
a necessity for documentation of the exact procedures undertaken by nurses to get assessment
and consent procedures engaged to determine the capacities of patient for offering consent. The
role of the employer in ensuring this is to provide the necessary documentation of the exact
procedures required for the nurses to obtain consent from the patient

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References
Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care [ACSQHC]. (2019). ACSQHC
Publications. Retrieved from:
http://www.safetyandquality.gov.au/
Lindwall, L., & Von Post, I. (2018). Habits in perioperative nursing culture. Nursing
ethics, 15(5), 670-681.
Miller, J., & Ingram, L. (2017). Perioperative nursing and animal-assisted therapy. AORN
journal, 72(3), 477-483.
Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) (2018). Code of conduct for nurses.
Retrieved from: http://www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au/Codes-
GuidelinesStatements/Professional-standards.aspx
Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) (2016). Registered Nurse Standards for
Practice Retrieved from: http://www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au/Codes-
GuidelinesStatements/Professional-standards.aspx
Schroeter, K. (2017). Advocacy in perioperative nursing practice. AORN journal, 71(6), 1205-
1222.
Schwam, K. (2018). The phenomenon of compassion fatigue in perioperative nursing. AORN
journal, 68(4), 642-648.
Spry, C. (2016). Essentials of perioperative nursing. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Stobinski, J. X. (2018). Perioperative nursing competency. AORN journal, 88(3), 417-436.
Taylor, C., Lillis, C., LeMone, P., & Lynn, P. A. (2013). Fundamentals of nursing: The art and
science of nursing care (pp. 530-40). Philadelphia: Lippincott.