Running head: NEGLIGENCE AND MEDICAL MALPRACTICE RESPONSE 1
Negligence and Medical Malpractice Response
Name
Institution Affiliation
Date
NEGLIGENCE AND MEDICAL MALPRACTICE RESPONSE 2
Winston Buchanan
In your discussion, you have focused on explaining negligence in a hospital setting. You
explain that the hospital and its workers have the duty of care because they have an obligation to
make sure that patients receive high-quality care. You have also explained how the breach of
duty may occur and added that neither the hospital nor the employees breached the duty of care
because Mrs. Smith’s case does not necessarily represent malpractice. To explain the injury, you
indicated that the rules that the hospital has set are the ones that caused the harm. Hence, Mrs.
Smith’s harm implies that the hospital needs to modify its rules. Although your discussion
mention Mrs. Smith, it does not cover the case as one could expect. You focused on the general
information about negligence and failed to narrow down your discussion to Mrs. Smith’s case.
Therefore, your discussion and mine have some points of difference.
The first point of difference is that I mentioned that the hospital and the workers
established the duty of care when Mrs. Smith became admitted to the hospital. That is, the
hospital was supposed to make sure that Mrs. Smith receives quality health care. Also, doctors
and nurses were supposed to exercise competency in their work to avoid putting Mrs. Smith at
risk. However, in your discussion, a different concept is discussed because you mentioned that
the nurse could have reported Mrs. Smith's harm the same day to demonstrate the duty of care. I
read an online article and found that the duty of care is based on the roles and responsibilities
that a professional has (Dowie, 2017). Therefore, reporting harm is not part of the care
obligations but doing what is required under someone’s role fulfills the duty of care. It is because
the nurse may fail to identify that his/her actions caused harm but may know what it means to
provide quality services. Based on this difference, I conclude that the hospital and its workers
had the duty of care because Mrs. Smith was under their protection.
The second point of difference is that you mentioned that Mrs. Smith's case does not
mean that there was medical malpractice. It means that there was no breach of duty between the
hospital and the patient. What you implied is that the case does not show any negligence in Mrs.
Smith's case. However, in my discussion, I mentioned that the hospital is liable for medical
malpractice performed by the health workers. It is because a breach of duty happens when
professionals fail to provide quality services by jeopardizing the health of the patients
(Goudkamp, 2017). Mrs. Smith contracted a staph infection, which caused long-term health
issues in her body. But, she could not have contracted the infection if Dr. Paltrow and the
residents were careful when it comes to the proper use of graphs. Therefore, I conclude that there
was a breach of duty.
The third point of difference is that you stated that Mrs. Smith’s problem was caused by
the rules that the hospital had set for its workers. Therefore, you proposed that the only way to
prevent Mrs. Smith’s problem from happening again is to change the hospital rules. However, I
took a different approach in my discussion because I explained that poor supervision in the
hospital was the cause of Mrs. Smith’s problem. According to Dharani and Ganapathy (2015),
supervision helps to make sure that workers are following the rules and procedures to avoid
mistakes that can lead to negligence. If Dr. Paltrow and the residents had someone to watch after
them, they would have been reminded to change gloves before attending to a new patient.
Therefore, my conclusion is that supervision led to negligence and not the rules.
In conclusion, proverbs 31:9 teaches us to “defend the rights of the poor and needy” in
whatever we do (ESV). Therefore, as a nurse, it necessary to understand that there are people
NEGLIGENCE AND MEDICAL MALPRACTICE RESPONSE 3
who depend on us for help, and it is our responsibility to stand with them. The hospital should
make sure it offers training to its employees to avoid the things that happened to Mrs. Smith
from happening again.
NEGLIGENCE AND MEDICAL MALPRACTICE RESPONSE 4
References
Dowie, I. (2017). Legal, ethical and professional aspects of duty of care for nurses. Nursing
Standard, 32.
Goudkamp, J. (2017). Breach of duty: A disappearing element of the action in negligence? The
Cambridge law journal, 76(3), 480-483.
Dharani, K., & Ganapathy R. N. (2015). Study on negligence of quality assurance and proposing
an effective framework for total quality management. International journal of Research
in Engineering and Technology, 4(2), 604-609.
