Legal rights of medication administration

Physicians are responsible pertaining to ensuring patient safety and quality of care always. Nurses perform a vital role in provision of patient treatment. Many of the tasks of nursing jobs carry a point of risk, with medicine administration having one of the greatest risk factors. Serious errors may well occur in roughly 2 every 1, 500 prescriptions (Lesar et ing, 1990). The rate of undesirable drug incidents are approximated at about 1%, with 12% to 30% of those classified as serious of life threatening ( Lindquist & Gersema, 1998).

Health care providers enter into a trust relationship with their sufferers, non-e more so than healthcare professionals. It is the betrayal of trust that is frequently part of the inspiring factor of patients and their families when malpractice claims are brought against health care providers (Kraman & Hamm, 1999).

In Fl a young girl with Guillian-Barre syndrome died from a medication error. The case visited court and a multimillion dollar settlement was reached when it was determined the lady was given succynylcholine which causes a fatal effect in people that have Guillian-Barre (floridahealthcarelaw.

com, 2011).

Another case which resulted in a fatality involved a 32-year-old girl who went through removal of her tonsils and adenoids. Her post op analgesia included a PCA, Phenergan 25mg IV queen 4 hours prn for pain, Compazine 15 mg po q four hours prn pertaining to nausea, Benadryl 50 magnesium po q 4 hours for itching and Halcion zero. 25 mg hs. The PCA was set intended for 1mg /activation with a 6th minute lock a bolus of 5mg morphine plus 25 magnesium Phenergan was handed IV. Pt was implemented 25 magnesium Phenergan IV at truck and early 1900s and 50 mg Benadryl at early 1900s.

The patient reported nausea for 2000 asking for Tums. The nurse reported to the sufferer that the medicine was not ordered, but the doctor could be called to ask for an order. The nurse also informed the person that Compazine was purchased for nausea. The patient chose to take Compazine and 10 mg was handed at 2030. At 2100 0. twenty-five mg Halcion was used for sleeping. At 2400 the patient was found cyanotic and unresponsive and could certainly not be resuscitated. She perished from a medication overdose (Benjamin, 2003).

A third case from Great britain involves a nurse who have substituted Actrapid instead of offering Mixtard since ordered. These two drugs are insulins. The nurse said the correct insulin was not inside the medication refrigerator. When confronted by her remarkable regarding the substitution the registered nurse stated your woman did not want the patient to have to wait for the period it would consider for the right medication to arrive from drug-store. The doctor also did not alert various other staff to the fact she had offered a shorter-acting insulin therefore the patient could possibly be more strongly monitored. The actions with the nurse put the patient at risk. An investigation was conducted as well as the nurse was found doing gross specialist misconduct and her term was removed form the UK nursing enroll (British Journal of Medical, 2003).

Circumstances such as these can lead to lawsuits becoming brought up against the healthcare crew involved in the person’s care plus the healthcare facility. In order malpractice to be established four elements are required: 1) a professional romance has to can be found between the individual and the doctor. 2) The conduct in the professional should be below the common of proper care 3) problems occurred (patient was injured), and 4) the activities of the healthcare provider was the cause of the damages. Negligence cannot continually be determined, but can result in multimillion dollar pay outs. Often disciplinary actions will be taken that result in termination of job and loss in licensure. If perhaps death or disability come from the error the healthcare provider often can be left with long lasting psychological scars.

The half a dozen rights of medication operations were set up to decrease the risk of medication mistakes. These contain the right individual, drug, medication dosage, route, time and documentation. There is a push to feature the 9 rights of medication operations, adding the right actions, form and response. If these steps are considered consistently prevention of medicine errors could be greatly reduced and events such as the above could be avoided.

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