Class 6 Unit 4 Discussion (L)

Application of Standards of Care: Your instructor has placed you in groups and assigned a case study for the Unit 7 group Project. Look at the legal malpractice case study that has been assigned to your group. Describe the case and discuss the standard of care that the parties will be held to in this case. How will the standards of care and the Nurse Practice Act be applied in a court of law if the case is sued?
Peer review at least two colleagues’ posts and try to review students that do not have feedback. Use Chapter 16, Effective Peer Reviews, in the Kaplan Guide to Successful Writing Handbook as a guide to review.


Malpractice Action Brought by Yolanda Pinnelas case study exhibits several cases of malpractices mainly attributed to staff burnout brought about heavy workload, as a result of poor nurse-patient ratio. Some nurses lack malpractice insurance, there is improper documentation of equipment/pump used on the patient to allow follow-up, despite no evidence of the chemo drug going into the tissue of patient, the nurse records infiltration to IV (wrong documentation).

General standards of care in nursing present general guidelines regarding what a nurse is expected to do or not do as per professional capacity. They express what a prudent and reasonable nurse ought to do and seek to help nurses offer competent, ethical and safe care. In case sued, all nurses involved may be found liable for negligence. The standards of care that apply in this case regard failure to proper documentation, failure for the nurses to respond to beeping and inform the nurse caring for the patient, failure to keep monitoring assessing the patient, and failure to place the IV pump correctly, cross-examining it to ensure that it is well placed (Townsend & Anderson, 2013). .This also goes for failure to give medicine at the right time. As per American Nursing Association, nurses are responsible for maintaining patient safety. They must employ professional judgment in determining the impact of their fatigue on performance, which may vary across individuals; in case this may compromise their practice, they must refrain from practicing. Nonetheless, it seems that despite this, nurses in the case continue practicing in a manner that compromising patient safety, hence unable to comply with standards of practice. The nurses in charge are expected to discuss the impact of fatigue with the management to come up with innovative solutions (American Nurses Association, 2015). 

The Nursing Practice Act determines legal parameters within which to practice nursing, based on specialty, education level and other factors. In this case, when sued, focus would be assessing whether all nurses complied with the act; operated within their scope of specialty, licensing and level of education. Disciplinary measures noted under the act will be imposed and this may extend to parting with monetary compensation and revocation of license. For instance, Florida Nursing Practice Act takes disciplinary actions in nurses who are unable to practice using reasonable safety and skill, as is the case of nurses in the case study, due to any physical/mental condition (fatigue). This also goes for disciplinary measures for those that fail to meet minimally accepts nursing standards, as is the case, of monitoring patient when alarmed by beeping and communicating effectively to inform those in charge. Under the act, all ARNPs must have malpractice insurance or documentation of being documented from it, thus a factor that courses must consider to determine the premise under which they got their licenses and jobs (Florida Board of Nursing, 2016).

References

American Nurses Association. (2015). Scope of practice. Retrieved from http://www.nursingworld.org/EspeciallyForYou/AdvancedPracticeNurses/Scope-of-Practice-2

Florida Board of Nursing. (2016). Nurse Practice Act: Chapter 464 Florida Statutes. Retrieved from https://phsc.edu/sites/default/files/program/files/Nurse-Practice-Act.pdf

Townsend, T., & Anderson, P. (2013). Are extended work hours worth the risk? American Nurse Today, 8 (5), n. p.