Professional, Ethical, and Legal Aspects of Error Disclosure - Research Paper Example

Professional, Ethical, and Legal Aspects of Error Disclosure Professional, Ethical, and Legal Aspects of Error DisclosureMedical errors have been on the list of the leading preventable causes of death in the United States. Error disclosure has been a controversial issue among nurses and other medical practitioners. Some have feared disclosing the error to avoid situations where patients may prosecute them (Banja, 2005). One of the situations involving error disclosure is the incorrect labeling of medical samples.

This is especially the case when samples are taken from different patients and labeled together. The practitioner may confuse the labeling leading to wrong results for the wrong patient. One of the effective practices for error disclosure, in this case, is ensuring that the patient understand the need for repeating sampling and analysis (Kalra, 2011). If the practitioner does not report the error to the patient, the patient may be unwilling or unavailable for another sample to be taken. In my future practice as a nurse, I will always ensure that I report and disclose errors to those concerned.

However, I understand that some errors are so serious that they should only be reported to the medical authority and not to the patient. To prevent committing serious errors that I will fear to disclose, I will do everything with maximum care ensuring that chances of errors are reduced. I will work with others in this concern by ensuring that I ask anything that looks unclear to me before implementing it on the patients (In Agrawal, 2014). However, the concern that I have is that errors are sometimes unavoidable yet patients take it as a sign of the incompetence of the practitioner.

ReferencesBanja, J. D. (2005). Medical errors and medical narcissism. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.In Agrawal, A. (2014). Patient safety: A case-based comprehensive guide. New York: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.Kalra, J. (2011). Medical errors and patient safety. Berlin: De Gruyter.