You are a surgical nurse at Memorial Hospital. At 4:00 PM, y
You are a surgical nurse at Memorial Hospital. At 4:00 PM, you… You are a surgical nurse at Memorial Hospital. At 4:00 PM, you receive a patient from the recovery room who has had a total hip replacement. You note that the hip dressings are saturated with blood but are aware that total hip replacements frequently have some postoperative oozing from the wound. There is an order on the chart to reinforce the dressing as needed, and you do so. When you next check the dressing at 6:00 PM, you find the reinforcements saturated and drainage on the bed linen. You call the physician and tell her that you believe the patient is bleeding too heavily. The physician reassures you that the amount of bleeding you have described is not excessive but encourages you to continue to monitor the patient closely. You recheck the patient’s dressings at 7:00 and 8:00 PM. You again call the physician and tell her that the bleeding still looks too heavy. She again reassures you and tells you to continue to watch the patient closely. At 10:00 PM, the patient’s blood pressure becomes nonpalpable, and she goes into shock. You summon the doctor, and she comes immediately. Discussion Post:We believe that both the nurse and doctor could be held liable for medical malpractice, also known as professional negligence. There are five elements that must be met for a professional to be held liable for malpractice. First, there must be a standard of care in place that outlines the level of quality that a profession should be held to. These standards of care guarantee patients receive safe nursing practice and include organizational policies, procedure statements, job descriptions, and guidelines for students. Second, there must be a breach of duty that is testified against by other nurses in the same field. Third, the nurse must know that they were not meeting the standard of care which could result in harm. This is known as foreseeability of harm and is judged by the criteria of if the average, reasonable person could have anticipated the injury, then the injury was foreseeable. In these cases, ignorance is not an excuse, but the lack of information could have an effect on the ability of the defendant to foresee harm. The fourth element is the failure to meet the standard of care having the possibility to harm the patient. This must be proven as having a correlation between the care given and the potential injury. The last element includes actual injury to the patient. It must be proven that the actions, or inactions, of the nurse directly led to patient injury (Marquis, 2020). Both the nurse and doctor in the situation have met all of the five elements of malpractice. It could be argued that the nurse could be held less liable than the doctor since they did notify the doctor multiple times about the bleeding. However, we still believe that the nurse could have done more in the situation to ensure that someone came to the bedside to evaluate the patient’s condition. This could have been their charge nurse, a fellow RN, or they could have further persuaded the doctor about the seriousness of the situation well before the patient went into shock. The legal ramifications of this case could include loss of professional licensure and loss of their jobs. We would like to ask the class if they have ever been in a situation where an ethical dilemma has occurred? If not, how would you approach the situation in the scenario above, is there anything that you would have handled differently?please provide resourcesHealth Science Science Nursing NURS 4370
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