Nursing malpractice

Document Type:Essay

Subject Area:Nursing

Document 1

Malpractice charges can be presumed against nurses for various reasons such as administering the wrong medication, failure to act when and as necessary during patient care among others. This assignment will review some of the reasons for malpractice suits according to Croke, (2006), identifying the role nurses played in various case studies and what they did wrong. To constitute malpractice, certain factors must be established in the relationship between the plaintiff (patient) and the defendant (nurse). There has to be a duty of care by the nurse to the patient, the duty of care must be violated or breached and the adverse effects on the patient should be directly linked to the breach of the duty of care (Croke, 2006). According to Croke, (2006), one of the causes of the problems resulting in a malpractice suit for the patient was the failure to honor the duty of care for the patient by not instituting emergency care for a patient with emergency medical needs.

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What the Nurse Did Wrong Nurse Lunsford, failed to communicate the findings of emergency medical needs of a patient she examined to the physician and despite having knowledge of the risk involved, failed to act to prevent foreseeable adverse patient outcomes. The nurse’s failure to take vital signs and to communicate patient needs at a time when such needs put the life of the patient at risk were wrong and against the nursing standards of care which require nurses to coordinate patient care and collaborate to ensure effective patient care (ANA, n. d). In the case of Ms. Muskopf, the nurse failed to communicate the patients' concerns over the correct surgical site to the surgeon and further failed to document the patient's concerns or take action to review the patient condition following the complaints.

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