Reflective Discussion

Concept A

            The first concept that I appreciated in the course is the sources of law. As Showalter (2017) explains, the sources of public law include the written constitutions, statutory enactments that legislative bodies such as state, federal, and local governments make, administrative rules and regulations, and judicial decisions. All these sources of law are useful in the understanding of the laws that govern the practice in a specific discipline, the penalties for breaching such laws, and similar cases that have been determined in court.

            My professional discipline is in business management. In this discipline, the legal framework is quite applicable to the alignment of business practices with the legal requirements of the profession. Consequently, as a business manager, I will be expected to understand the legal environment surrounding the operations of a company. For instance, in a healthcare organization, from a business or administrative perspective, the understanding of privacy laws or antitrust laws will be beneficial to the process of tuning the operations of the facility with the legal requirements. Where there are ambiguities, it would be useful to research judicial decisions to obtain the precedents existing for particular cases and issues. 

Concept B

            The second concept that I learned through the course is torts, particularly negligence. By definition, negligence is an act or failure to act that results in the harm of an individual. It is different from battery, which is an intentional act, in the sense that it emphasizes a person’s (respondent’s) duty of care, the breach of that duty in the process of dealing with a second party (the plaintiff), and the causation of injuries to the plaintiff resulting from the breach of duty (Furrow, Greaney, Johnson, Jost, & Schwartz, 2013). 

My discipline is business management. From the materials on torts, I have understood the concept of a legal person – an individual or entity – which underlies the discussion of negligence. The principle of legal personhood has enabled me to understand that both private persons and organizations have a duty of care to humanity, and the breach of that duty amounts to negligence if there is proof of the breach and its causation of an injury. Therefore, as a business manager, it would be upon me to understand the duty of care that I have to various persons and to develop policies to ensure that the organization upholds the duty in its operations. I would also be in a position to understand the acts of negligence performed by other legal persons against the business entity that I manage. 

References

Furrow, B., Greaney, T., Johnson, S., Jost, T., & Schwartz, R. (2013). Health law: Cases, materials, and problems (7th ed.). St. Paul, MN: West Academic Publishing

Showalter, J. S. (2017). The Anglo-American legal system. In J. S. Showalter, The Law of Healthcare Administration (pp. 1-23). Chicago, IL: Health Administration Press.

Concept A

            The first concept that I learned through the course is torts, particularly negligence. Negligence is a failure to act that results in the harm of an individual. An example of Negligence is a patient with End Stage Renal Disease, needing dialysis, and it is not ordered or arranged. Harvard Public Health Study estimated that only 27% of adverse events are due to negligence. Every person desires a reliable and safer medical system. Medical errors occur every minute resulting in injuries to patients. However, the challenge is to create a structure that compensates patients for harm or damages, identifies the medical mistake, learn from the sentinel events, and help develop a system that eradicates or lessens medical errors. Negligent offenses are the result of individuals lacking to do what is required of them causing harm or injury.

            As a clinician and MICU Nurse Manager patient negligence is a significant concern that we must be aware and correct when it happens. It is critical that medical personnel will follow hospital policies and procedure to make sure the organization maintains the duty on its operations. I must ensure clinicians and other members of the team will provide the care, treatment and performed nursing care accordingly.   

Concept B 

            The Second Concept is “informed consent.”  According to the Joint Commission, informed consent is a form of communication between clinician and patient’s that results in the patient’s authorization to undergo a specific medical intervention.” The inform consent consists of the diagnosis, treatment or procedure, alternatives for treatment and intervention, risks, benefits, prognosis, assessment of patient understanding, likely course of recovery, consequences of not consenting, and patients signature permitting for the explained procedure. Patients must have acceptable, and enough information if they are to take part in making a decision that will indicate their principles and preferences, and physicians play an important role as educators during the process.  Informed consent it is the foremost model for safeguarding the legal civil rights of patients and point in the right direction the ethical practice of medicine. Its utilized for various reasons in different contexts such as legal, moral or administrative. Even though these reasons have common characteristics, they are not identical, thus heading to several standards and criteria for what constitutes “adequate” informed consent.

            As a clinician and MICU Nurse Manager, it is critical to maintaining open communication with other members of the medical team such as physicians to make sure that every patient going to a procedure or receiving a particular treatment will have in their medical record a valid signed consent form that meets Joint Commission requirements. 

References 

De Bord, J. (2014) Inform Consent. Ethics in Medicine. University of Washington School of Medicine. Retrieved from https://depts.washington.edu/bioethx/topics/consent.html

Sohn D. H. (2013). Negligence, genuine error, and litigation. International journal of general medicine, 6, 49-56.

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