This is an unfortunate event for the patient and any health care team member. A breach in confidentiality goes against the HIPAA privacy rule and has severe consequences. First, the patient is affected because they feel like it’s the hospital’s fault for the leak in their health information. The patient feels betrayed and loses all trust in the facility. This causes a potential loss of business from the patient and whoever the patient tells about the incident.
Laws on the other hand are binding rules of conduct. When laws are broken, it is punishable by an authority figure. An example of this would be a nurse making a medication error and not reporting it. The legal system and ethical system overlap in most situations, and every patient contact has the potential to produce a legal or ethical situation. “Knowledge of legal issues are essential because nurses are required to practice in accordance with legislation affecting nursing practice and health care failure to respect the legal rights of clients may result in legal or disciplinary actions.” (Makely, Austin, & Kester, 2013, p.64).
Gross negligence typically consists of unintentional acts, but can be deemed intentional based on the reckless nature of the event. An example of gross negligence would be not giving an elderly bedridden patient food or water for several days. Malpractice is defined as the failure of a professional person to act in accordance with the prevailing professional standards or failure to foresee consequences that a professional person, having the necessary skills and education, should foresee” (Guido, 2010, p.93). Malpractice is often called professional negligence. The most common categories of malpractice and negligence among nurses are the failure to follow standards of care, use equipment in a responsible manner,
Benson as negligence. Keeping in mind the definitions of negligence, gross-negligence and malpractice, I would have to argue that Mr. Benson’s case is one of malpractice. The defining fact that Mr. Benson was injured at the hands of a medical professional makes this an issue of malpractice rather than negligence. Mr. Benson’s injury was a direct result of a medical professional failing to act in “accordance with the prevailing professional standards” (Guido, p.93). The circumstances surrounding how the incorrect extremity was amputated was not clearly identified, but the doctrine of res ipsa loquitor – “the thing speaks for itself” – can be applied in this instance (Guido, 2010).
In particular, critics state that diagnosing death and putting people on end of life care pathways is a form of euthanasia – one newspaper story featured the headline ‘Sentenced to death on the NHS’ (Devlin 2009). This type of criticism is founded on the myths outlined above, particularly those relating to passive and active euthanasia and to withdrawal of treatment. It is worth restating that care pathways allow healthcare professionals to try out treatments and withdraw them if they are not effective, and to reintroduce treatments if patients respond in unexpected ways. A clearer understanding of the ethics and law in this area should help nurses to address these criticisms and reassure themselves that the guidance set out in care pathways is legally and ethically sound. NURSING
Wrong information can lead to serious outcomes. For example, an out-dated address of a patient, can lead to any communications sent to the patient ending up in the hands of a wrong or dangerous person, which can have disastrous effects on the patients’ health wellbeing and also my organisation. The information that I use needs to be checked for accuracy because inaccurate information can lead to serious outcomes. Information can relate to anything with regards to my organisation. When it comes to patients, it can be their address, telephone number or next of kin details, when it comes to employees, it can be their appraisals, salaries, again their address and telephone numbers, and for the business, it can be the business’s finances, profits, employee details, and various other information.
There are so many things that the Medical Law and Ethics course has covered that pertains to the healthcare field. This includes situations that have to do with patients, healthcare workers, laws & procedures, and patient confidentiality, which I will now tell about briefly. The Medical Law and Ethics course has covered many situations pertaining to the relationships between healthcare workers and patients. Healthcare workers must make sure that a patient understands any procedures that they may be given, and they must have the patient’s consent to give the procedure. If the consent is not given by a patient the practice, physician, or the healthcare worker can be held liable in a lawsuit.
In the given case study, for instance, future provision of moderate sedation and additional backup must remain a mandatory exercise. Second, involves gathering of data and available evidence as a means of highlighting the occurrence of events, a behavior, or even condition (Clark &Taplin, 2012). According to most hospital regulations and ethics, when a patient begins to exhibit complications, it is upon the nurse and the ED physician to note the symptoms and offer appropriate treatment. Further examination of this scenario reveals a number of hazards/errors, i.e., shortage of qualified nurses, unfamiliar with appropriate medication dosages, the current procedure for conscious sedation was not followed, and the most fundamental hazard is the inability of the staff to prioritize and inform the administration (Nursing Supervisor) of the situation in the ED. The emergency department still failed to abide by medical ethics of practice.
It is the failure to meet a standard of care or standard of conduct that is recognized by a profession reaches the level of malpractice when a client or patient is injured or damaged because of error. Medical malpractice is professional negligence by act or omission by a health care provider in which the treatment provided falls below the accepted standard of practice in the medical community and causes injury or death to the patient, with most cases involving medical error. It usually involves an alleged tort of negligence (states the party who acted wrongfully is liable for damages to the injured party). Criminal negligence is the failure to use reasonable care to avoid consequences that threaten or harm the safety of the public and that are the foreseeable outcome of acting in a particular manner. Unlike the tort of Negligence, a person who is convicted of criminal negligence is subject to a fine, imprisonment, or both, because of the status of the conduct as a
It is almost certain that an employee will witness some form of negligence at any given time, and will be accountable for their actions. Any healthcare professional seen to be carrying out unsafe practice will be deemed accountable. During this essay the author will begin analysing and discussing both legal and ethical implications, healthcare professionals encounter on a day-to-day basic while in clinical practice. It will begin by discussing the scenario encountered during the second year of placement in relation to autonomy, consent, fluctuating capacity and refusal of intervention and nursing responsibility, making reference to earlier law cases which relate to this scenario. Within the Healthcare profession today authors debate