Legal Case Study
Susan L Groover
Walden University

Legal Case Study Examine the implications of health law for nurses, ethical principles, and decision making when faced with the potential for medical error is part of the nurse’s daily activity when caring for patients. Each state has a Board of Nursing governing the practice of nurses. The board of nursing specifies through codes, titles, articles, and definitions how the licensed registered nurses can legally practice. The case study “Where Did This Patient’s Intravenous (IV) Therapy Go Awry?” is the study being addressed in the paper. Error The nurse in this case chose to perform a nursing procedure without a physician’s order. The nurse felt she had no …show more content…

The pros of providing an apology for mistakes or errors can result in a positive outcome or a negative outcome. The legal or financial outcome depends on the severity of the error and the values of the patient and family members. All families want to know what happened or why it happened. Some people value the honestly and they may not take legal action. The cons of providing an apology is it can be a costly error and the nurse could be in jeopardy of losing their professional license.
To prevent such an error from occurring nurses need to know their options. Nurses should be encouraged to report potentially negative nursing actions and complete incident reports. Nurses must be educated to the chain of command, so they are not making decisions on their own and they know who to contact for support. When questionable nursing practices occur, nurses should be educated as to what is expected of them to minimize the risk of error. Education should be an ongoing event as evidence based practice becomes available. Staff should be encourage and reimbursed for attending educational meetings, conferences, and for joining their specialty organization. Staff should be encouraged to obtain their specialty certification. Errors happen and they should be reported in staff meeting and in hospital wide committees to prevent their