Class 6 Unit 4 Discussion (M)

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.


Yolanda Pinnelas case study is an exemplification of malpractices that nurses face, most of which are preventable. As Buppert (2017) notes, nursing standards of care provide a framework by which nurses practice nurses to ensure competence and prevent ethical and legal violations. Standards of care in nursing are found in different sources, including nursing practice act, nursing board declaration statements, journals and other forms of credible researches, textbooks and nursing education among others. Often, they are usually very basic and general, applicable across settings and adjusted to make them specific to specialty, at time. In the case of Pinnelas, malpractices can be seen due to failure to comply with nursing standards of care in reference to poor insertion of IV tube and failure to monitor patient when giving the IV chemo drug by the nurse in charge leading to failure to notice the wrong insertion (leaking IV fluids to nearby tissues). This also goes for poor collaboration skills among nurses and communication of critical patient care information by nurses who had the Beep alert from IV pump but never bothered to check and/or inform the nurse/physician in charge. All these events lead to surgery and her losing the functionality of her hand meaning that she will never get to practice her career as a music conductor.

The Nursing Practice Act-NPA stipulate legal standard of care that nurse must employ to decrease legal issues that may emerge. This implies doing what reasonable nurse under similar practice and offering care to a similar patient may do. When applying NPA, focus would be evaluating whether the nurses have complied with nursing standards of care as under the Act. This is in reference to negligence of patient rights and needs (constant monitoring), inability to practice while being reasonable of safety of patients, and knowingly violating provisions/rules of board of nursing in relation to patient care. Due to these violations, the Act allows for disciplinary actions against the nurses, including denying them renewal of licenses, suspending, denying and revoking license (Buppert, 2017).

While assessing the nurses involved in the care of patient in reference to whether they meet standards of practice, the court will assess nurse compliance to proper protocols and expectations of nurses in provision of quality and safe care. There may be a tendency of the nurses to pin the lack of standards of care to the hospital due to the high nurse-patient ratio, leading to overworking and fatigue with the hope that the hospital with be veraciously liable, as indicated under respondent superior doctrine. This may happen, as a hospital is also responsible for ensuring nursing standards of care are maintained, thus responsible for ensuring there are sufficient nurses needed to maintain the quality of care provided all the time- injuries emerging from nurse shortage may pose a liability to the hospital (Buppert, 2017). Nonetheless, this may mostly happen if the employee was acting as per nursing professional care standards and within the expected scope when the malpractice occurred (American Nurses Association, 2015). However, if the nurse still acted against the standards of care, either through omission or on negligence basis, the nurse will still be liable for violation of standards. In this case study, despite the nurses being busy, they failed to comply with basing nursing standards of care by failing to monitor the patient and communicate effectively in the shared patient care responsibility to ensure patient safety.

References

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

Buppert, C. (2017). Nurse practitioner's business practice and legal guide. London, LND: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Hood, L. (2013). Leddy & Pepper's conceptual bases of professional nursing. London, LND: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins