Essay Sample on Medical Standards of Ethics

Introduction

Ethics can be described as the behavior of a person that is guided by his or her moral principles. The code of ethics is derived from acceptable moral expectations of the society. The code of ethics defines a worker's duty of care in the line of his duties. The duty of care is a legal obligation to observe reasonable care while doing something that you know very well hat is reasonable care is not applied; then it may endanger the safety and lives of others. The standards of care among individuals differ from one person to another. A person with professional training in a certain field is expected to exercise higher standards of care while doing his or her job as compared to a person with no training in that field. A nurse and a doctor, therefore, are expected to exercise absolute care when handling their patients because they are professionally trained in that field. In this essay, I study three different cases in the medical fraternity and give a legal opinion on how they could have been ruled (Stuart, 2014).

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The first case is that of Judy, a psychiatric patient with suicidal thoughts who suffered a permanent anoxic brain injury as a result of attempting to commit suicide while under the care of a nurse. Was the nurse negligent in this case? In the event where a nurse leaves the patient in the middle of the shift without notifying the supervisor or organizing for an alternative nurse to care for the patient, then that is considered to be negligence through abandonment. As much as the nurse had the left patient in the care of the psychiatrist, the nurse should have remained at a reasonable distance so that as much as the nurse will not be interfering with the psychiatrist's session with the patient, the nurse ought to have stood at a distance reasonable enough to see the psychiatrist leaving the room. The nurse should also have locked the bathroom or at least entrusted someone to guard it so that Judy may not access it alone as she had suicidal thoughts and therefore should not be left alone. The duty of care demanded on a psychiatric patient need to be very high as compared to other patients with no mental conditions. The nurse, therefore, was negligent in letting Judy shower by herself (Shahriari, Mohammadi, Abbaszadeh, Bahrami, 2013).

On the question of whether the nurse acted carelessly by leaving the bathroom door opens during the psychiatrist's session with Judy, the answer is in the affirmative. As captured in the above statement, the nurse should have closed the door during the psychiatry session or at least entrusted someone to guard it because as a trained nurse, she knew very well that persons with suicidal thoughts should not be given a chance to remain alone. The hospital's policies and procedures are very insignificant in this case. As long as the hospital ensured that Judy was under the care of a professional and registered nurse, the duty of care was delegated to the nurse. In this case, therefore, I would rule that the nurse was solely responsible for Judy's permanent brain injury and therefore should compensate Judy and the nursing board investigate her professional conduct for further punishment.

In the second case of Mr. Gonzalez where his intestine was perforated during the operation, there are several questions that come up. First, was the nurse negligent in advising Mr. Gonzalez to just take aspirin during the pain after the operation? The Professional Nursing Ethics demands that a nurse should not provide for care that is beyond his or her competence. Mr. Gonzalez's medical condition was beyond the competence of the nurse and therefore required the attention of the surgeons. Because the surgeons had gone home, the nurse was within her professional duty to advise him to take painkillers the nurse could not correct the surgery mishap of that patient (Ball, 2011). On the question of whether the nurse exceeded her scope of practice, the answer is no because she was not in a position to summon the surgeons neither could she operate on the patient on her own. However, the nurse could have advised Mr. Gonzalez to visit a local emergency center for check-ups and also to arrest the situation earlier before it could escalate. Therefore, there was an element of negligence on her side. However, this misjudgment by the nurse by not advising Mr. Gonzalez to visit a local emergency center is not sufficient enough to hold her culpable for gross professional misconduct and negligence in this case. I would rule therefore that the physician is held responsible for Mr. Gonzalez's medical condition and therefore should pay for damages. The nurse is innocent in this case.

The final case is about a Mr. Aburi who died following complications arising from a colonoscopy surgery. The first question is to look at the standards of care for patients with colonoscopy conditions. The standards of care for such patients should be high as compared to the care given to the other patients. The care should include putting them in an observation room to see how they react to the surgery, and when the polyps are removed; their diets should be keenly observed so that it helps in the recovery process. This makes the standard of care for such a patient to be high. Although it is not stipulated in nursing home care plan that the wound should be checked hourly, a professional nurse should be aware that there is a potential for the patient's intestinal walls to be injured by the colonoscope leading to either perforation of the intestinal walls, an infection or bleeding (Solbrekke, Englund, 2011). The nurse could have acted prudently therefore by checking regularly on the patient to see whether he is showing any of those signs. The nurse could have detected Mr. Aburi's bleeding earlier and referred him to the hospital early enough for treatment. The lawsuit should not center entirely on the surgeon for sending the patient to the nursing home hours after the operation. Normally, that is the procedure of colonoscopy patients as they are not at the highest risk of developing complications after surgery. The lawsuit should instead center on the nursing home to explain how they allowed unlicensed persons to attend to Mr. Aburi. In my ruling, therefore, I would hold the administration of the nursing home responsible for the death of Mr. Aburi as they negligently allowed unqualified medical practitioners to attend to a patient and as a result, they mishandled Mr. Aburi's medical condition leading to his death (Buzgova, Ivanova, 2011).

References

Ball, S. (2011). The duty of care. Dental Nursing, 7(Sup1), S4-S5.

Buzgova, R., & Ivanova, K. (2011). Violation of ethical principles in institutional care for older people. Nursing Ethics, 18(1), 64-78.

Shahriari, M., Mohammadi, E., Abbaszadeh, A., & Bahrami, M. (2013). Nursing ethical values and definitions: A literature review. Iranian journal of nursing and midwifery research, 18(1), 1.

Solbrekke, T. D., & Englund, T. (2011). Bringing professional responsibility back in. Studies in Higher Education, 36(7), 847-861.

Stuart, G. W. (2014). Principles and Practice of Psychiatric Nursing-E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.