The nurse was correct to perform her medication rights prior to administration. This was done correctly if she verified that this was the exact patient, the right drug, the appropriate dose, the correct route, and the accurate time, appropriate documentation, and accurate response. According to the scenario above the nurse verified the order, the rights of medication, the correct patient, and documented in the medication administration record. The nurse failed to document how the individual tolerated the injection of the hydrocortisone. The nurse administered the injection in the left upper, outer quadrant of the patient’s buttocks. This describing the patients left dorsogluteal. According to ATI Nursing Education the current evidence validates a greater risk for paralysis from sciatic nerve damage with this site. Therefore, the use of the dorsogluteal site for intramuscular injections should be avoided. …show more content…
The definition of malpractice according to Merriam-Webster dictionary is dereliction of professional duty or a failure to exercise an ordinary degree of professional skill or learning by one rendering professional services which results in injury, loss, or damage. The nurse did have a professional duty which including following her medication rights, administering the drug correctly after consent had been obtained, and documenting the events clearly and precisely. There could have possibly been a breach in professional duty regarding the choice of injection site. This is dependent on the time period of which the medication was administered and the evidence and practices at that current
What is malpractice? The given definition is improper, illegal, or negligent professional activity or treatment, especially by a medical practitioner, lawyer, or public official. These cases are occurring more all over the state than they should be due to human era. The people at the hands of doctors are being let down as well as left with disfiguration or even death. These cases are leaving people to question their surgeons as well as the nurses attending with them.
According to a cross-sectional study involving 237 nurses, approximately 65% of the nurses have made medication error. Only 31% of the participants reported medication errors. According to the study the most common type of reported errors were wrong dosage and infusion rate. The most common causes were using abbreviations of the drugs and similar names of the drugs. However, the study did not find any relationship between medication years and years of experience, age, and working shift. Yet study found association between intravenous injection and gender (Cheragi at al
Treatment without consent - Charlotte, the nurse on duty, had forced James into getting the injections therefore causing him emotional distress. Treating a competent patient who has validly refused treatment could constitute an assault or battery. The legal provisions supporting a competent patients’ right to refuse treatment in Australia can be found in both legislation throughout all the States and common law. The Australian Charter of Healthcare Rights is also a helpful source of guidance as it reinforces the common law position that is based upon the principle of patient autonomy. The High Court of Australia first articulated the principle or refusal of treatment in Marion’s case, stating that a legally competent person has a right “to choose what occurs with respect to his or her own person.” Under the NSW Health Patient Charter, consent in regard to an operation, procedure or treatment is both a specific legal requirement and an accepted part of good medical practice. Medical practitioners are also expected to clearly explain proposed treatment, and adequately inform their patients on significant risks and alternatives associated with the treatment.Failure to do this could result in legal action for assault and battery against a practitioner who performs the procedure. Charlotte made no effort to explain or gain a consent from James.
According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA 2009), the wrong route of administrating medication accounts for 1.3 million injuries each year. An article published in September issue of the Journal of Patient Safety estimates there are between 210,000 and 400,000 deaths per year associated with medical errors. This makes medical errors the third leading cause of deaths in the United States, behind that comes heart disease and cancer. To prevent medical errors always follow the Three Checks and most importantly the Rights of Medication Administration. The “Rights of Medication Administration” helps to ensure accuracy when administering medication to a patient. When administering medication the administer should ensure they have the Right Medication, Right Patient, Right Dosage, Right Route, Right Time, Right Route, Right Reason, and Right Documentation. Also remember the patient has the right to refuse, assess patient for pain, and always assess the patient for signs of effects.
a) Pharmacists have ethical and legal obligations to ensure that the prescriptions they fill are valid, both in that the physician must be prescribing the medication for a valid reason and that the person filling the prescription must be doing so for valid therapeutic reasons (ASHP, 2008; Brushwood, n.d.). The court needs to take these obligations into account, and then must determine whether the frequency with which the prescription was refilled would have required a pharmacist to check with the patient's physician or at least another pharmacist in order to determine if the pattern represented abuse (Brushwood, n.d.). The basic considerations before the court, then, are the pattern of behavior (i.e. prescription refilling) represented in the facts and the relationship of this pattern to the legal and ethical standards of pharmacists. The addition was certainly a foreseeable consequence, and this means that standard applications of negligence torts might also be applicable.
The medicinal experts on staff for the 12 hours that the patient was in painful distress while she was being drowned by the feeding solution, neglected to perceive that she was in trouble until it was past the point of no return. While this is obviously a blatant case of medicinal negligence, not all medical malpractice cases are quite so obvious, and not every single medical procedure with a troublesome result can be viewed as medical malpractice negligence. The essential prerequisite for medical malpractice is that the doctor or other medical expert has breached the acknowledged standard of care for their specialty in their geographic area, and that the breach caused harm to the patient. Doctors, as human beings, commit errors consistently, yet in the event that their mistake does not bring about injury or harm to the patient, there are no grounds for lawful
In states where school nurses are allowed to delegate some of their functions, nurses should only delegate administration of medications when it is safe for the students. School nurses should never delegate medication administration in cases of an unreasonable risk or harm to the student. Doing so, the nurse could be considered for disciplinary action, even if the state law provides immunity from civil liability (Schwab & Gelfman, 2005). Although state laws may allow for the delegation of the administration of oral medications, delegating other forms of medicines, including injectable, intravenous, or rectal medications is often prohibited. In fact, delegation of injectable medications may be limited to life-saving situations (Department of Health,
Medical malpractice, is misconduct that usually involves failing of a physician to follow a standard of care, which results in harm to a patient.
Even though I did not see or hear the nurse bring up an issue about the patient’s safety before, during or after the procedure, I am sure she was actively monitoring the patient and the surrounding situation for harm. As a future nurse, I have been made aware of the need to identify and correct unsafe practices or procedures in order to improve the patient’s experience and prevent unnecessary harm.
“The definition of a health professional is a person who works to protect and improve people’s health by the diagnosis and treatment of illness to bring about a complete recovery from mental, physical and social perspectives, either directly or indirectly (Kurban, 2010, pg. 760).” Nurses in the community today have acquired an increasing responsibility to intervene with medical decisions. In the past, there were clear differences between nurses and doctors. It was more common for a nurse to be supervised directly under the physician. They are not just performing Doctor’s orders anymore. The nurse role in patient care has been widely expanded. Allegations against someone can be one of the most stressful moments of their careers. Negligence
In the case scenario, the nurse did not apply her knowledge to check the correct adult dosage of methadone. Methadone is a narcotic pain reliever, similar to morphine (Hodgson, 2011). When administering narcotics, it is required to have someone co-sign the MAR sheet to double-check with you (by using the five rights). The nurse was not able to use her critical thinking when she administered methadone. If she was a trained nurse, she would have realized it right away that there is something wrong with the dosage amount. There is a big difference between milliliter and milligram.
This can be read as a key ethical question to many healthcare case studies because of the errors and situations that occur. One of the explanations for this occurrence may be the overwhelming workload, chaotic environment and lack of individual attention prescribed to each patient. These issues can cause a disruption to the ethical principle of Beneficence. The principle of Beneficence calls to action the act of helping others and having compassion for the patients. This principle can be threatened when a doctor or caretaker is overworked and unable to effectively manage the series of patients and work they are assigned to take on. I believe that the admitting doctor did not initially catch the error of not calling for the specific drug need because he was more focused on getting Mr. Londborg stable and on the medication to treat his initial and present condition before worrying about the preventative medication. In addition, the doctor was so focused on helping everyone all at once that he was blind to the small details and loose ends that needed to be taken care
Do you sometimes question yourself about whether you should continue to teach aspiration of blood when giving an intramuscular or subcutaneous injection?
The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA 2010), defines a drug error as ‘any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate use of patient harm. Although not all drug errors have lead to patient harm it is important to recognise that if a mistakes has been
An intramuscular injection is an injection given directly into the central area of a specific muscle. In this