Professional Liability
John Doe
Devry University
Health Rights & Responsibilities
Professor:
11/24/2013

There may be a perception that doctors are held responsible for the majority of medical malpractice lawsuits, the reality is that nurses are frequently finding themselves defending the care they provide to patients. “Negligence, which is often an unintentional action, occurs when a person either performs or fails to perform an action that a reasonable professional person would or would not have performed in a similar situation.” (Freemen, 134). Since I work in a hospital and I work closely with nurses on daily bases, I decided to discuss ways nurses can be held liable for negligence. Nursing malpractice occurs when a nurse fails to competently perform her/his medical duties and that failure harms the patient. There are a slew of ways that a nurse can harm a patient—from failing to notify a doctor when something is really wrong with the patient to administering the wrong drug. Like malpractice involving physicians, nursing malpractice happens when a nurse does not fulfill duties in a way that a competent peer in another location would do in the same situation, and that negligence injures the patient. In malpractice cases, often the key issue is who is liable for the nurse’s illegal action- the physician or the facility she work at, if that a nursing home, hospital, or clinic. Whoever is liable will be responsible for compensating the patient for the nurse’s fault. We need to keep in mind that sometimes unfortunate event happen to a patient when an allied health professional has performed a procedure that would normally be beneficial to the patient, since that every patient will react to a treatment in a different way from other patient, therefore unwanted outcome may occur, and in these cases a court will determine if negligence took place in this case.
According to our text book, nursing malpractice can happen in a variety of situations, such as doing or saying nothing when action is required, improper administration of medication, or injuring a patient with equipment. It is the duty of the patient to prove that the allied health professional action was negligence, by showing that; * Duty- the patient must prove that a relationship had been established. The nurse, patient relationship starts in the minute the patient arrives on the nursing unit. From that moment there is an obligation, or legal duty, to care for that patient. * Dereliction or Neglect of duty- is a nurse failure to act as any ordinary and prudent peer nurse would act in a similar situation, the patient would have to prove that the nurse’s performance did not comply with the acceptable standard of care. * Direct or proximate cause- the patient would have to prove that the nurse’s dereliction of duty was a direct cause for the injury, and that the injury was proximately or closely related to the nurse negligence. * Damages- if the patient does not receive any injury, then there is no negligence case, for the patient to seek compensation he/she must prove that the nurse caused the injury, there are many forms of injuries a patient can seek compensations for, such as ; * Personal injury * Permanent physical or mental disability * Loss of enjoyment of life * Pain and suffering * Past and future loss of earning * Medical expenses
One of the scenarios that a nurse can be held liable for negligence is when dealing with an aggressive and agitated patient, the behavior of such a patient can put the patient and sometimes the staff on harm way, after exhausting all options of calming the patient, nurses often find themselves forced to obtain a doctor order for four points restrains. Each facility put a very strict protocol to follow when applying restrains, some of the restrains procedures is to perform a check of the patient’s person for contraband, assigning the patient to a quiet private room where there would be less stimulating environment and where he could sleeps and calm down, the nurse must perform patient monitoring and assessment checks every 15 minutes, and the nurse must document her monitoring and assessment findings at each of the completed checks in the patient record. The nurse will be facing the risk of malpractice lawsuit if the patient sustain an injury related to the application of the restraints, I personally have witnessed situations where the patient was so agitated and disoriented, that he started to pull on the restraints to free himself, and the more he tried without successfully freeing himself, the more and harder he tried to free himself of the hand restrains to the point that the restrains get so tight and he was able to interfere with the site of the IV on his forearm, that fluids started to infiltrate and caused a swelling on his wrist, in this specific scenario the nurse was able to spot and correct the situation fast be calling the IV team to relocate the IV site away from the hand restrains. If the nurse was not vigilant, the patient was at risk of permanent injury and losing his hand due to restricting the circulation on his arm caused by the fluid build up under his skin and from the tightness of the restrains. This nurse was able to prevent

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