Reference no: EM133735770
Assignment:
What ethical principles or values are at stake for the nurse, Megan, and the hospital administration?
As nurses, our primary goal is to ensure patient safety on all fronts. When a nurse who is not being given the right resources to manage and care for her patients, such as Megan, medications errors like the one we saw can occur - putting the patient most at risk. Providing high quality care is a fundamental duty in healthcare and not having enough staff can lead to rushed and incomplete care, undermining everything the healthcare system should be standing for. Furthermore, nurses are encouraged to build trusting relationships with their patients, as they are some of most involved team members. However, when an error occurs, this trust leaves the patient vulnerable and uncertain.
How would you balance the legal obligations with the needs of your nursing team to prevent staff burnout and ensure quality patient care? What guiding ethical principles would inform your decision if you were Megan?
I agree with the nurse that pointed out the nurse-to-patient ration in the beginning of the video. Even though in the moment it might have seemed as a rude or not supportive move, I would also do the same if I knew I was already running thin and did not want to risk my license and hurt a patient. I would maybe wait till my discharge patient was completely discharged before taking on another patient. Or two nurses can be assigned one patient first half of the shift and second half so that the responsibilities are also split. But either way in this video, it seems like more nurses need to be hired at a faster rate when a position opens. If I was Megan, I would not have taken the patient - especially knowing I was already fully loaded and not able to handle more. I would have been down to help split some responsibilities, but not all of them. Legally, the hospital and administration need to ensure there is enough staffing for patients to get quality care at the end of the day. Because when errors are made, and patients are put into even more fatal positions than the ones they came in for, that is preventable one hundred percent.
Reflect on any personal experiences or stories related to nurse-to-patient ratios and ethical dilemmas in healthcare. How did these experiences influence your perception of nurse leadership and patient care?
"Medical errors have been identified as a leading cause of death and injury, with research suggesting that around 50% of adverse medical events are preventable" (Andel, et.al., 2022).
Stats like these help organizations to investigate the different levels of system failures and to take the needed steps to prevent such actions from happening again. I work in home health, so the urgency of need is not the same as bedside, but there have been days when the patient list exceeds a normal workday due to lack of nurses, and even though I do take patients past my normal hours, the drive home becomes hard. There have been days where I tell my company I cannot work past a certain time, and they are respective of my needs. However, it is a dilemma almost everywhere. I think one of the biggest things that come up is compensation. In my line, I expect to be compensated for travel time especially when I'm being sent patients 1.5 hours away from where I normally work. Same goes in the situation above.