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School-Based Health Care Case Study

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School-Based Health Care
A nurse practitioner (NP) faces an ethical and legal dilemma while treating a 6-year old student with a diagnosis of asthma. The student was brought to the School-Based Health Center for symptoms of cough, wheezing, and difficulty breathing while at recess. During the visit the student was questioned about having asthma in which he produced an expired and empty albuterol inhaler. During the school year the NP made numerous attempts to contact the student’s mother requesting her presence to discuss her child’s asthma management. This student returned to the SBHC several times throughout the school year requesting additional albuterol inhalers due to unknown family members taking the inhalers. Throughout the school …show more content…

The purpose of implementing SBHC was to implement comprehensive health services to underserved and uninsured school children while decreasing missed school days and use of emergency rooms (Huang, 2009). The mission of utilizing SBHC is to provide convenient health care to school children with the permission and involvement of their parents. Health care is performed during the school hours without the presence of parent as long as an up-to-date signed consent is located in the student’s chart. Within this paper I will discuss the ethical and legal dilemmas associated with …show more content…

The nurse must be sure that the care provided does not harm or put any patient at risk. Harm can be physical, emotional, financial, individual, and within the community. Avoidance of harm requires that the nurse thoroughly educate the patient in order for the recipient of care to make an informed decision.
Denying healthcare to a patient who has a parental consent on file at the school is considered unlawful. According to (Huang, 2009) there currently is no law that regulates the requirement of a parent to be present during appointments with the SBHC. The consent signed by the students’ parent does not specifically state that a parents must be present or actively involved in his care. Based on this the NP is legally obligated to continue to provide care to the student. Westrick (2014) states that a civil action is a dispute between individuals that was designed to award monetary compensation to individual for being harmed. A nurse can be involved in cases such as malpractice, injury lawsuits, workers compensation, and employment

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