Nursing Malpractice Case Study

Question #1 This case involves a 67 years old man who had total right knee replacement at the hospital. His family are the plaintiffs on the case as he passed away after surgery. The defendant on the case is a now former surgical nurse that worked at the medical-surgical nursing care unit. She was reassigned to this position from the post-acute critical care unit. When the patient arrived to the care unit the nurse assessed him and considered him to be stable. Hours later, the man suffered from nausea and vomiting, making him not being able to tolerate the required respiratory therapy. The patient was checked and found to be cyanotic and unresponsive by the licensed practical nurse (LPN). A code was called and the patient was intubated

The xiphoid and patient’s vitals needed to be properly documented and assessed constantly. This is considered a breach of duty by the nurse. It was her job to make sure this was being done. Had the patient’s vitals and status been checked more thoroughly upon his arrival, his vomiting and hypoxia could have been resolved, and possibly prevent his subsequent death. This lack of patient care is considered malpractice. In the case of a nursing malpractice situation it is defined as negligence which is “doing something or failure of doing something a reasonably prudent person would or would not do. It is the failure to use ordinary or reasonable care” (Ashley,

Following this, the nurse should have monitored his condition constantly and intervene if necessary. The lack of proper treatment led to the patients vomiting and cyanosis. The eventual diagnosis of anoxic encephalopathy could have been prevented had he received proper care in time. I do not believe the code response team was negligent in this situation. It was the nurse’s job to check on the patient and call a code if necessary. The delay in calling a code was what made the patients’ health decline, not the time it took the code team to respond. There was also a lack of communication between medical units. I would like to believe that if the nurse would have known about the hypotension episode, that the patient would have been observed more closely. This lack of information led to the mistreatment of the patient. Negligence is clear in this case as the patient did not receive the proper care in time because of the nurse not performing her duties