Nursing Home Case Study

Posted by Winnie Melda on May 6th, 2019

Abstract

Ethics and moral values provide a framework for behavior assessment and also influence nurses’ goals, strategies, and actions. The paper reviews a nursing home case study that illustrates a scenario of nurse R engaging in nursing malpractice and breach of duty by stealing medications from the clinical facility. The scenario involves Kevin, a case manager for the nursing home, whose duty is to dispense medicine, who realizes that several of the resident’s medication orders have changed drastically making it impossible to keep with the inventory. Further investigations reveal the sad truth that nurse R was stealing the medicine. The paper also identifies the various risks involved in this situation and identifies and legal and ethical implications. Besides identifying the ethical and moral issues in the case study, the paper also highlights the steps that may be employed in solving the scenario so as to reduce any negative outcomes and additional financial costs. The findings of examining the nursing home case study are that ethics and values in nursing practice promote professionalism which is a core factor in health care. Moral and ethical practice in nursing practice is significant in improving the achievement of positive health care outcomes as well as increasing patient satisfaction.

 Nursing Home Case Study

Introduction

The case study examines the ethical issues in public health in a nursing home case study. In the case, Kevin a case manager for the nursing home, whose duty is to dispense medicine, realizes that several of the resident’s medication orders have changed drastically making it impossible to keep with the inventory. Kevin confronts nurse R who was on duty for two weeks, but she claims that the residents presented with other conditions that prompted the medication changes and Kevin are contented with the reply. However, one night Kevin catches nurse R red handed in the office removing resident medication and placing them into her purse. After informing his co-worker, Kevin finds out that nurse R has been selling the medication to others for the past two months. Kevin records the act the following night and reports it to the supervisor. Nurse R gets fired immediately and is also arrested. The company becomes the lead story on the local news for several weeks and also faces many lawsuits filed by residents. The badness of the motives and ends of the nurse’s actions have various ethical implications. Nursing ethic is concerned with addressing the moral situations that are unique to the nursing profession and patient care. The ethical issue in this nursing home case is about the practices that seem to allocate medical resources unjustly and in a fraudulent manner.

Discussion

The healthcare risks involved in the drastic change of resident’s medication is administering wrong medication that could lead to deleterious effects, trigger an allergy or even worsen the clinical condition. The action of the nurse could result in increased negative healthcare outcomes in the nursing homes as well as decreased patient satisfaction. Errors in drug prescriptions exact a high cost in modern medical practice regarding both human suffering and additional expenses of health care (Glavin, 2010). The nurse’s actions also risk facing legal action due to incompetence in the delivery of healthcare. In this case, Kevin risked facing medical malpractice if he had failed to report the scenario. The legal implications include the residents filing lawsuits if a patient’s conditions worsen or die due to improper care. The nurse manager in the nursing home may face legal action for failing to manage the facility, and nurse R may be jailed for violating ethical regulations. The nurse was involved in professional misconduct for committing a fraud. As goes with some intentional torts, committing a fraud can lead to both civil and criminal proceedings for any medical practitioner.

The case scenario can be resolved by following certain steps. First, the nurse responsible for the mess should be fired and charged with committing a criminal offense. The second step is to hire a competent nurse or a team of nurses to review all the recent cases handled by the particular nurse. The team must review and recall all prescriptions that were done incorrectly within the shortest time possible. All the medications that are recalled immediately and follow up are done on the patient to monitor their healthcare progress. Also, the nursing home must explain to all stakeholders what happened at the nursing home so as to prevent bad publicity from destroying the hospital.

Nurses face daily ethical and legal challenges in the provision of quality care (Ulrich, et. al., 2010). Targeted ethics-related interventions are necessary to retain nurses as they address caring for an increasingly complex patient population. Various ethical and legal issues are involved in this scenario. The first ethical issue is malpractice and negligence in which the nurse breached duty by failing to conform to the standards of care and also causation that led to a loss of medications. The nurse is also liable to an intentional tort that would lead to harm of the clients by willfully prescribing wrong medications. The nurse also violated the principle of beneficence in which a healthcare professional has a duty to promote good for others and also nonmaleficence in which they are required to do no harm to others whether intentionally or unintentionally.

In the nursing home case, various stakeholders are involved in ensuring positive healthcare outcomes for patients that are family members, doctors, patients, physicians, hospital administration and policy makers. Various approaches can play a crucial role in addressing the issues in this scenario. First, nurses must understand and comply with the nursing code of ethics that addresses moral issues such as how nurses ought to act in the healthcare facility and how nurses ought to treat patients and each other in the medical facility (Epstein & Turner, 2015). Also, the nursing manager and hospital administration may create awareness and contribute to building a culture of ethical practice in the nursing home through participation in workplace initiatives or committees that foster culture change (Lachman, 2012).

The scenario is an illustration of the consequences that may occur in a health system as a result of misconduct and malpractice of nursing staff. The scenario is a bad picture of what happens when nurses fail to follow the moral and ethical standards.

Conclusions

The nursing home case study shows that ethics and values in nursing practice promote professionalism which is a core factor in health care. Moral and ethical practice in nursing care is significant in promoting the achievement of positive health care outcomes as well as increasing patient satisfaction.

References

Epstein, B., & Turner, M. (2015). The nursing code of ethics: Its value, its history. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 20(2).

Glavin, R. J. (2010). Drug errors: consequences, mechanisms, and avoidance. British journal of anaesthesia, 105(1), 76-82. DOI: 

Lachman, V. D. (2012). Applying the ethics of care to your nursing practice. Medsurg Nursing, 21(2), 112.

Ulrich, C. M., Taylor, C., Soeken, K., O’Donnell, P., Farrar, A., Danis, M., & Grady, C. (2010). Everyday ethics: ethical issues and stress in nursing practice. Journal of advanced nursing, 66(11), 2510-2519. doi:  10.1111/j.1365-2648.2010.05425.x

Carolyn Morgan is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in best research paper writing services. If you need a similar paper you can place your order from non plagiarized research papers.

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Winnie Melda

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Winnie Melda
Joined: December 7th, 2017
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