Legal Issues of Medical Malpractice - Essay Example

?Malpractice: Failure to assess and document Outline Page 2 Introduction 3 Malpractice: Understanding the concept 3 Case Study: failure to assess and document 4 Risk management and Recommendation 6 Abstract Malpractice has been an issue since legal revolution took place that has brought dilemma to the health care profession both nursing and medical alike. The implications it has made to the healthcare arena are creating millions of debates on whether it has really brought goodness to both clients and health care professionals alike. On the authors own opinion the principle that governs medical malpractice, that encompasses nurses and all other health care professionals, is advantageous on its essence but tons of considerations has to be taken otherwise. Legal issues governing the medical malpractice law already way out of the field of health care and one has to have a good legal counsel to prove the actions made to be acted upon good faith under the scope of health care profession. Malpractice: Failure to assess and document Introduction: The world has evolved into a large pit of legalities, where every action has a legal implication if done mischievously. This in turn as a person have reinforced the right to the best health care possible but as a health care professional emotions are wired not because of fear that the author will personally be mitigated upon but the author speaks for the rest of the nursing professionals who understand that biologically speaking some things may get out of people’s hands and worst out of people’s understanding. But legality tells it otherwise that every person is held legally accountable despite clarity of one’s conscience and the ability to pay legal proceedings, for the sake of legality and the truth legal proceeding is a must and health care professionals are required to maintain professional liability insurance to offset the risk and costs of lawsuits based brought by litigations of medical malpractice. This in totality is deemed by the author to be legally reinforcing the rights of both health care professionals and their clientele but the decision of whether one has gone way out of his actions will be decided by the evidences at court. Malpractice: Understanding the Concept To fully understand medical malpractice is to go over its meaning and to cite an example which will be detailed further in this essay. Medical malpractice is professional negligence by act or omission by a health care provider in which care provided deviates from accepted standards of practice in the medical community and causes injury or death to the patient. Standards and regulations for medical malpractice vary by country and jurisdiction within countries (HG Global legal Resources, 2012). According to Nurses Service Organization, medical malpractice claims can be asserted against healthcare providers including nurses. Although there may be a perception that physicians are held responsible for the majority of lawsuits, the reality is that nurses are more frequently finding themselves defending the care they provide to patients. Moreover over $83 Million was paid for malpractice claims involving nursing professionals according to the most recent study (Nurses Service Organization 2012). Case Study: Failure to assess and document The case that will be tackled in this paper involves the very basic of all nursing procedures which is to assess patient condition before and after any procedure and to properly document any reaction even if nothing happened. Documentation is very important for the nursing profession; it does not only details the kind of nursing care and procedures done to every patient but in cases of legal proceedings the documentation will tell and not only back nurses up but to prove otherwise with what was done for the patient. This is a case of a 23 woman who presented in the emergency of a local hospital with persistent flu like symptoms—generalized body ache and fever for the past two weeks. An abnormal CT scan of the chest prompted for admission—near collapse of the right upper lobe, large consolidation of the left lower lobe and moderate consolidation of the left lower lobe. Hence the patient was admitted and was started on oxygen therapy and antibiotic treatment that was later on adjusted due to presence of streptococcus Pneumonia in her blood cultures. During the first phase of treatment there was no significant changes in her vital signs, she was not dyspnoeic nor in distress. The only other medical situation the AP was attending to aside from her pulmonary problem was her low potassium level which was being corrected during then by potassium added to her intravenous fluid. The documentation of the nurse then seem problematic due to undocumented data that could have been present in the documentation such as how the potassium ordered was administered, when it started and finished and how the patient was before, during and after the procedure. Only in the course of the case the patient was documented to have increasing heart rate over a day that the nurse failed to report since other vitals remained stable. The physician on that day noted her increasing WBC count and opted for a pulmonary consult for possible bronchoscopy but deemed that the patient was stable and that aggressive pulmonary treatment are not necessary instead ordered for the patient to be transferred to the telemetry unit. AT 10:00 pm the attending was called that the patient had gone into cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead. The family of the deceased filed a suit to the doctor and three nurses. As bereaving relative they have all the right to file a suit for their loved ones especially if the death happened so suddenly they will deem that something have gone wrong. Unfortunately the simplest thing that the nurse could have done was to assess and document and report the patient’s condition. The nurse’s documentation could have supported her innocence and legal accountability instead of using it as a proof of the incompetence. When experts have studied the case it was found out that the ICU nurse had given the wrong dose of medication, failed to document what time the patient was discharge at the unit and what was her condition then and what specific equipment was used when the patient was transported. It was also found out that the nurse’s notes suggested that the patient’s heart rate had increased but calling the attention of the attending to assess was never made and unfortunately this action could be pointed as the what could have caused the patient’s death and that no matter how hard a nurse would like to defend himself still the documents failed to prove it. The nurse’s defence is that she should have not been assigned to the ICU due to lack of training and experience (NSO, 2009). Risk Management and Recommendation Putting an inexperienced staff is a risk management issue that has to be attended to. In this case the nurse is held legally accountable; knowing in oneself that you are not competent enough is a personal conviction especially in today’s time where legality of action is a big issue. The nurse could have called upon the attention of the immediate person such as the charge nurse and or supervisor that the assigned clinical area is outside the nurse’s training and experience and could have requested for an alternative assignment. As a nurse one must also know one’s capabilities and should never reason out lack of experience as a valid reasoning because everything can be learned and be done for the first time otherwise no one will be able a task for the second time. It is always a golden rule to note that when a nurse is in doubt better ask the opinion of an experienced one. In the case provided the ICU nurse never requested for supervision nor asked if the dosage and calculations of the drug is correct. On the other hand negligence was also on the part of the hospital if inexperience is truly the case; the nurse should not be working independently if still not capable in that area and should have a close supervision of an experience nurse for training and thus wrong doing will be avoided in terms of assessment, medication and documentation. It would have been a win-win case that clients are being well taken care of while training another competent nurse in the future. Documentation should always be regarded as legal and everything a nurse put on it can be used in defence or against him. Proper documentation will always provide legality of a nurse’s action whether deemed correct or something was missed out. Proper documentation will always be nurses’ biggest proof a proper execution of nursing care given to clients. Assessment should be in the documentation whether it is normal or not, and what actions was made to address such problems such as timely reporting to the attending physician for an update of the patient’s condition. Physicians should check on the vital signs monitoring sheet instead of assuming that the patient was stable. The attending would have not ordered transfer if he has seen the VS changes in the record and should have been aggressive in the treatment plan that could have prevented the progression. References: HG Global Legal Resource (2012) Medical Malpractice. Retrieved from: http://www.hg.org/medical-malpractice.html Nurses Service Organization (2009) Nurses and Medical Malpractice: Case Study with Risk Management Strategies. Retrieved from: https://www.nso.com/pdfs/db/Nurse_SLCS_X-8540-0112_final_web.pdf?fileName=Nurse_SLCS_X-8540-0112_final_web.pdf&folder=pdfs/db&isLiveStr=Y Read More