Summary: The Tort Of Negligence

In the Code of Ethics for Nurses provision 4 states “The nurse has authority, accountability, and responsibility for nursing practice; makes decisions; and takes action consistent with the obligation to promote health and to provide optimal care.” This was not done, there was no regard for human life. The patients in the hospital were treated as a burden. A meeting was held where the doctors agreed that

The plaintiff in Ard v. East Jefferson General Hospital, stated on 20 May, she had rang the nurses station to inform the nursing staff that her husband was experiencing symptoms of nausea, pain, and shortness of breathe. After ringing the call button for several times her spouse received his medication. Mrs. Ard noticed that her husband continued to have difficulty breathing and ringing from side to side, the patient spouse rang the nursing station for approximately an hour and twenty-five minutes until the defendant (Ms. Florscheim) enter the room and initiated a code blue, which Mr. Ard didn’t recover. The expert witness testified that the defendant failed to provide the standard of care concerning the decease and should have read the physician’s progress notes stating patient is high risk upon assessment and observation. The defendant testified she checked on the patient but no documentation was noted. The defendant expert witness disagrees with breech of duty, which upon cross-examination the expert witness agrees with the breech of duty. The district judge, upon judgment, the defendant failed to provide the standard of care (Pozgar, 2012, p. 215-216) and award the plaintiff for damages from $50,000 to $150,000 (Pozgar, 2012, p. 242).

This would be a civil case against Jeanette 's physician. Civil cases generally deal with wrongful acts and are able to sue a business or a person for monetary value (Fremgen, pg. 36). In comparison to criminal case, where the government would have to prove intentional harm against others. The receptionist and the doctor 's action could be argued for Negligent tort. According to Fremgen, "Tort is a breach of duty that causes injury" (Fremgen, pg. 133). A healthcare professionals "action and inactions can be considered negligence" (Fremgen, pg. 133). In this case, the receptionist ' inaction to inform the doctor right away did cause harm to Jeannette. Jeanette 's

The negligence of this incident had a negative impact on the patient’s family members. Approximately 25% of cases involving medical negligence involve poor nursing care. Another negative aspect was patient’s family follow up was poor resulting in lack of importance highlighted on the pressure wounds. Ashley (2003) states nurses can be sued for malpractice, this means he or she is being sued for “negligence”. Furthermore, the nursing health professionals can lose its credibility among a community as they failed to provide a holistic care for the patient. However, a positive outcome was nurses were able to reflect among this evidence based practice to assist in better quality in patient

As a nurse it has happened to be an essential need to be conscious of the legal aspects associated with caring and serving people in the health industry today. Unfortunately, only fewer people want to get into the health care field fearing the legal aspects and the predictable law suits. The Tort Law is one of the legal aspects of the law that most nurses is more familiar with. This is the law that involved misconduct and negligence cases, which many nurses take the time to study in depth. This is one of the most universal and well-known laws, something that nurses and doctors must be familiar with, to maintain their care resourcefully.

If testing results support the suspicions of impairment, then management is mandated to report the incident to the North Carolina Board of Nursing (NCBON, 2011). With increased medication errors, Beverly failed to provide a safe and effective nursing care to the patient, therefore violating the laws of the Nurse Practice Act (NCBON, 2009).

While the seriousness of a patient’s death should be investigated, the hospital failed to act promptly and investigate the supervisor’s or human resource (HR) department’s denial of reasonable accommodations or the previous errors made by the nurse. Therefore, the wrongful termination seems more likely to have been the case in this situation. The defense will show that rather than terminating her employment earlier the hospital waited until something catastrophic happened. The nurse took appropriate action discussing her health condition diagnosed by her physician that precludes her from working in the ER at full capacity with her supervisor. The nurse should have been given alternative assignments as appropriate or disability leave if no other alternative was available and should not have been terminated wrongfully after the incident (Pozgar,

In the past year, since the amendment to the Canadian Criminal Code was passed, and Medical Assistance in dying (MAID) became law, health care professionals, and their regulatory bodies have been revising their professional practice standards. Because of this bench marking legislation, it created legal and ethical issues that will be addressed in this paper. I will critically analyze the barriers for patients and their families and for the health care professionals who are involved in providing MAID. I will also discuss the regulatory bodies, and their guidelines and standards for their members, and how this may create legal issues as well.

This case involves Mr. Horton, his wife, and his mother in law. While Mr. Horton was a patient at Niagara fall memorial medical center the nurses noted in his medical records that he was dizzy, confused and unable to focus. Horton was in a two story private room with a window

When assessing whether a no fault regime is better than a negligence rule in dealing with the causes and consequences of medical error, it would seem prudent to first understand the meaning of the term “medical error”. Liang defines medical error as ‘a mistake, inadvertent occurrence, or unintended event in health-care delivery which may, or may not, result in patient injury’ (2000, p.542). The consequence of these errors (or adverse events) that lead to patient injury, and the method by which we determine and administer compensation for such injuries, has been the source of heated debate amongst scholars in recent

Many people do not ponder on the possibility of some form of malpractice or misdiagnosis occurring during their time as patient. They put their trust solely in the healthcare provider. More importantly nurses hardly ever consider being the one that causes harm or the one whom neglects a patient, let alone misdiagnose a patient. When entering the nursing field one needs to look at all options that will help protect them from sustaining any loss. Many nurses in today’s time are purchasing profession liability insurance or more commonly known as professional indemnity. Professional indemnity helps pay for expenses that occur during malpractice, negligence, and misdiagnosis lawsuits.

Ethical principals are the seed of which nursing flourishes from. Many ethical principals were involved and dishonored in this case such as, justice, autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, confidentiality and fidelity (Burkhardt et al., 2014). I believe justice was the main principal involved as the entire ethical predicament was revolved around unjust behavior and treatment of the residents. The residents were treated poorly and given unequal rights as a causation of their illnesses. Autonomy, an essential piece of human rights was also being violated in this ethical dilemma. The residents did not have any choice or independence in their care or how they were being treated. Beneficence and non-maleficence are significant dynamics of this ethical situation, as the health care providers needed to reflect on how they can have the maximum benefit while diminishing possible damage to the residents (Burkhardt et al., 2014). Our actions as nurses should always be beneficent and non maleficent, continuously being kind, compassionate and doing what is in their best interest as well a removing and preventing harm. Confidentiality is a key component of nursing and it was blatantly being violated as the health care

Nurses should be aware that their negligence causes very bad effects on patients and should be anxious about medical malpractice because nurses are held answerable for their own negligence and could find themselves being charged for malpractice. (Elis, 2012).

Torts of negligence are breaches of duty that results to injury to another person to whom the duty breached is owed. Like all other torts, the requirements for this are duty, breach of duty by the defendant, causation and injury(Stuhmcke and Corporation.E 2001). However, this form of tort differs from intentional tort as regards the manner the duty is breached. In torts of negligence, duties are breached by negligence and not by intent. Negligence is conduct that falls below the standard of care established by law for the protection of others against unreasonable risk of harm(Stuhmcke and Corporation.E 2001). The standard measure of negligence is the universal reasonable person standard. The assumption in this case is that a reasonable

     There are two specific cases that show how the standard of care is used in the determination of cases in certain situations. They both take place in Canada, and they both pertain to nurses that had left their posts to go on there coffee breaks. One of these cases was proved to be negligent, while the other was proven not to be a case of negligence. These are both taken from the publication Nursing and the Law: