Ethical and Legal Case Analysis
Case Study
It was the start of a morning shift in the ward. The night duty nurse, Nurse A comes with four patient files to the nurse’s station to Nurse B, the morning shift nurse and says, “We will do the handover here. Today we have Ms Rainbow who is a real colourful character; she changes from the sweetest angel to a screaming torture all at once. She is a IV drug user and brought in here through emergency after finding her unconscious in the street. Looks like multiple organ failure but her drug withdrawal symptoms are making her a trouble maker.”
After all handovers Nurse B goes into the ward to check on her patients. One is a patient for surgery on the day. Second one is a postsurgical unstable patient. …show more content…
An arrangement for allergy test could have been an appropriate thing to be done which could have put Ms Rainbow at ease alleviating her complaint of “nobody is doing anything to make me feel better.” Also knowing that the patient had drug withdrawal symptoms it was Nurse B’s duty to arrange drug and alcohol team to come and review the patient.
When patient management was not proper and no proper information was provided to the patient it is breach of duty (Hodgson 2009). A proper diagnosis of reason or a plan to diagnose for facial oedema was not made in Ms Rainbow’s case. Most of the documents were incomplete and the word druggie was seen in occasions instead of IV drug user which is a very unprofessional way to write patient notes.
There is a professional obligation of reasonable care versus foreseeable harm (Forrester and Griffiths 2010)p.92 which was not been foreseen by the nurses involved in this case.
If the provision of care was not readily available for any reason, the wish of the patient to go to another institution should have been respected and the nurse should have thought of providing a referral with sufficient information to help with the welfare of the
Case Study
It was the start of a morning shift in the ward. The night duty nurse, Nurse A comes with four patient files to the nurse’s station to Nurse B, the morning shift nurse and says, “We will do the handover here. Today we have Ms Rainbow who is a real colourful character; she changes from the sweetest angel to a screaming torture all at once. She is a IV drug user and brought in here through emergency after finding her unconscious in the street. Looks like multiple organ failure but her drug withdrawal symptoms are making her a trouble maker.”
After all handovers Nurse B goes into the ward to check on her patients. One is a patient for surgery on the day. Second one is a postsurgical unstable patient. …show more content…
An arrangement for allergy test could have been an appropriate thing to be done which could have put Ms Rainbow at ease alleviating her complaint of “nobody is doing anything to make me feel better.” Also knowing that the patient had drug withdrawal symptoms it was Nurse B’s duty to arrange drug and alcohol team to come and review the patient.
When patient management was not proper and no proper information was provided to the patient it is breach of duty (Hodgson 2009). A proper diagnosis of reason or a plan to diagnose for facial oedema was not made in Ms Rainbow’s case. Most of the documents were incomplete and the word druggie was seen in occasions instead of IV drug user which is a very unprofessional way to write patient notes.
There is a professional obligation of reasonable care versus foreseeable harm (Forrester and Griffiths 2010)p.92 which was not been foreseen by the nurses involved in this case.
If the provision of care was not readily available for any reason, the wish of the patient to go to another institution should have been respected and the nurse should have thought of providing a referral with sufficient information to help with the welfare of the