Scholarly Paper: The Role Of The Nurse As Plaintiff And Defendant

Nurses play a vital role in healthcare. They are the patient’s advocate and act as the patient’s “eyes and ears”. Pictured here, is Mark, a Registered Nurse working in the Schulich Heart Centre at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, preparing medications for his patients. Making sure the correct medication is administered at the right time is an integral part of a patient's recovery. On his unit, patients are primarily admitted under three services: cardiology, cardiac surgery, and vascular surgery. His ward in particular only has registered nurses as the patients are very acute and registered nurses have more education and training than a registered practical nurse. His daily activities include administering medications, tracking vital signs,

Poor communication puts patients in danger because it can lead to medical errors and adverse events. For example, a medication error can occur if a physician’s orders are not updated in time or if the outgoing nurse does not provide the correct time in which a dose was administered last. Thus it is crucial to communicate any recent treatment that has been implemented. In this way, nurses and physicians can facilitate the prevention of errors. Another consequence of ineffective communication is that it can decrease morale and increase work-related stress among members of the healthcare team. If nurses and physicians are not understanding each other’s actions, conflict ensues. It can cause toxic interpersonal relationships. This, in turn, will affect the level of patient care because it is difficult to focus amidst emotional strain and

As a professional administering and delegating care to a patient you have a great responsibility to communicate with them. The world of healthcare is large and to the general public is utterly confusing. As the professional you need make the patient feel secure about the care they are receiving. It also lends itself to informing the families of the patient as well. If the patient is confused, it’ the job of the professional to be the teacher. It’s not enough for the information to be given, the information needs to be interpreted.

As a nurse, we have the responsibility of providing safe and patient-centered care to the community. Patients are more than numbers, and as nurses we must treat them as individuals who need attention and personalized care. While caring for patients, we must use

Nurses must be able to learn from each other, their seniors, and even patients on how to enhance the quality of care they provide. Through teaching and learning, nurses will understand that individual patients have varied preferences, values, needs, and respond well to different kinds of medication. In addition, continuous teaching and learning processes will enable nurses to know that individual patients experience varied side effects of the same prescribed medicines (Davis, Schoenbaum & Audet, 2005). Thus, nurses will understand the importance of consulting with individual patients while providing health care services to patients, and that illuminates the significance of patient-centered care in the U.S. health care system. As nurses a huge part of our duty is teaching the patient and our teaching cannot be effective if our communication is not the best, therefore we need to change the way we communicate in order for our patients to understand. Efficiency in health care services can as well be attained through proper communication. Other than communicating with fellow medical professionals in medical facilities while providing care to patients, nurses are directly obliged to communicate with their patients to find out their values and preferences when making clinical decisions. Essentially, consultation with patients, which is a major component of patient-centered care, is necessary

As professional nurses we have obligations to both the patient and the medical community. Nursing is not only a trade developed through formal education, but also through the interactions we have in practice which are equally if not even more important in development. Each Patient has the right to the best possible care regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, beliefs, or previous decisions. Nurses should strive to build therapeutic relationships that will benefit the client and leave a lasting impression. We have a duty to play several roles including educator, supporter, listener, and advocate. The professional nurse should be an active member of the interdisciplinary team contributing to knowledge, growth, and a respectful atmosphere. Most importantly, each patient deserves a nurse that is part of a healthcare team focused on obtaining their ideals of health and preserving their privacy, sense of safety, dignity, and human

Diagnosis – Pulmonary embolisms are diagnosed through several ways; x-rays of the chest are done to get a good picture of the lungs, MRIs are done to produce images that are more detailed than x-rays, blood tests are sometimes conducted to check for a natural clot dissolving substance in the blood, venography’s are performed to get x-ray images of the veins in the lungs. CT scans are done to get cross-sectional views of the lungs. Duplex Venous Ultrasound are performed by using radio waves to check the flow of blood and to see if there are any clots existing in the legs. The most effective way of diagnosing a pulmonary embolism is through a pulmonary angiography, this is when the doctor makes an incision and inserts tools into the veins of the lungs and then puts a dye though the veins to detect any blockages.

Ethical principles are a crucial component of nursing care as they reflect a commitment to take the best decisions for the patient's recovery and wellbeing. Some of these aspects are autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, and fidelity, as well as the principles established by the ANA's code of ethics of advocacy, responsibility, accountability, and confidentiality (Potter, Perry & Stockert, 2016). In this sense, nurses are required to act by following and meeting the expectations of these behavioral standards. For example, it is important to inform the client about every risk and benefit that could be obtained from nursing interventions, and is the nurse's responsibility to make sure they understand before consenting. The nurse must

Mr. Humphrey agrees since nurses are caregivers; this implies that they are the ones in charge of taking care of the patients through providing them with food, administering drugs to them, and even ensuring that the hygiene of the patients is maintained at all time. Apart from being caregivers, they also make decisions pertaining the patients. In doing so, the nurses will determine the measures that should be taken to improve the patients’ health in case it is on the decline. This is a vital role as it is upon this that the patients’ recovery is determined. Moreover; nurses are also in charge of making communications with the patient and even their family members (Institute of Medicine (US), 2011). This aspect greatly determines the direction of the treatment as the opinion of the family members is not only integral but also vital in some instances. The hospital can avoid being put into an awkward position if the nurses communicate effectively with their

Nurses play various different roles during their career; depending on the patient they’re providing care for. The roles of the nurse include, but aren’t limited to, caregiver, communicator, teacher, and patient advocate. In order to ensure patients are receiving quality care, nurses must first make sure they are using safe practice. Communicating with other health professionals while serving as a patient advocate is essential when keeping the patient

Upon admission to the hospital or doctor’s office, the physician should have several diagnostic tests performed to confirm or rule out a stroke and to see the extent of damage caused if there was, in fact, a stroke. The doctor should immediately order blood work in the interim while the patient is waiting to have more in-depth tests performed. The lab tests should include tests such as: blood glucose (Hypoglycemia may mimic stroke), electrolytes to access kidney function, complete blood count (CBC), cardiac markers, prothrombin time (PT), international normalized ratio (INR), and activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT) (Jauch, et al., 2013). More blood work may be ordered if the patient has history of other chronic diseases or risk factors to other chronic diseases. In addition to the initial blood work, the physician may order more tests to further investigate the cause and extent of damage. These tests include but are not limited to: angiogram (dye added to blood followed by x-ray), vessel ultrasound (to check for abnormal blood flow to brain), computed tomography scan (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), echocardiogram, and electrocardiogram (EKG). Though, the MRI is more sensitive to abnormalities, the CT is still the most

In the world of registered nursing a mutual respect between the physicians and the nursing staff is crucial to patient centered care. As nurses they are our superiors in the past 50 years the relationship between these two disciplines has changed dramatically. Nurses in the past were viewed as subordinates and they simply performed the tasks assigned to them. It was frowned upon to question any orders from a physician and nurses took on more of a submissive role in patient care. Presently, nurses are part of a multidisciplinary team that works together with other health care providers to come up with strategies for an effective plan of care. Dr. U. (DO) a 30 year old female whose practice is in family medicine in New York shares the same attitudes about her nursing staff. I chose her for a couple of reasons one because she is family and two because family medicine seemed like a great overall platform for this assignment. Plus, maybe part of me wants to know what she really thinks of the nurses sitting around our table at Christmas dinner.

A positive D-dimer test would be expected with this patient. Arterial blood gases may show that the patient is hypoxic and has respiratory alkalosis (McCance & Huether, 2014). A CT scan may show an affected artery that has become enlarged. Hemotocrit may be high causing the blood to not be able to thicken like it would normally. PTT and INR could be low and also tell the provider how capable the body’s blood clotting capabilities are. Drawing troponin levels is helpful since a pulmonary embolism tends to increase right ventricular strain (McCance & Huether, 2014). Checking the patient’s heart rhythm is also necessary to detect any strain on the heart. A transesophageal echocardiogram (TEE) may insightful since the patient is experiencing a pulmonary embolism and the provider would want to know if there was any other evidence of clots in the body. It provides information on the heart and how it is or is not functioning. A TEE has the ability to determine if a patient has any regurgitation, stenosis, abnormal tissues, and even endocarditis (“Transesophageal,”

Nurses, and the tasks they do are the working units of any medical establishment. The field of nursing is a unique occupation, a mixture of the medical and hospitality fields. A nurse must be well equipped to perform medical care while also comforting their patients. To accomplish this feat, a specialized language has been developed consisting of medical terminology, extensive documentation, and body language. With such a large amount of complicated information being transferred in medical occupations, naturally, there are many variations of the standard “nursing language”. Currently, the American Nurses Association has approved thirteen languages that support nursing care. With this lack of consistency and no standard

The cascade which must occur for blood to successfully clot is complex, multivariable, and fraught with opportunities to go awry. The coagulation process requires the organization of platelets, enzymes, cofactors, and fibrin to develop a protective covering when blood vessels become injured to prevent loss of blood and prohibit infection.1 While some pathologies related to clotting are a result of age, environment, or lifestyle, the most common cause of thrombophilia, an increased propensity to form blood clots in the vessels, is an inherited genetic mutation known as Factor V Leiden