Analysis of Legal and Professional Issues



Professional and Legal Issues

Introduction

Hospitals are organizations that are responsible for the health care of individuals. Hospitals comprise of specialized equipment and staff with the help of which proper treatment is provided to patients, and their health is restored. It is obvious that hospitals are responsible for the health of patients and the management of hospitals should be very strict to keep control over the environment and service that is provided by the hospital staff to their patients (Kunders, 2007). It has been observed that hospitals also experience various issues in the management and treatment of the patients and the service that they provide. The purpose of this paper is to analyze some scenarios in a hospital setting, and discuss the professional and legal issues involved along with the legal actions that could have been taken under such scenarios.

Scenario 1

Issue with Controlled Medications Missing

Controlled medications are those medicines that are illegal to possess unless a hospital or individual has license to possess them. This scenario is about the missing of controlled medications in a hospital ward. In this scenario, Nurse M was considered to be liable for the missing of controlled medications. This nurse was a single mother, and the job was very important for her. The professional and legal issues that would have caused this error are discussed as follows.

Professional and Legal Issues

The missing or ineffective dispensing of controlled drugs could occur because of some professional and legal issues that might be involved in the management of the hospital due to which the nurse was not able to use the controlled medications as prescribed. The most significant issued that could be involved in this scenario involve error in reading the prescription and error in patient identification. These issues occur because of some prominent factors. These factors include communication error or failures, error in drug packaging and labeling, working environment and the information provided about the drugs. These are the most prominent factors that give rise to the error in reading the prescription and identifying the right patient (Barbara, 2012). These are the most significant professional and legal issues that could be involved in this scenario in a hospital ward. The reasons why these professional and legal issues are most favorable to have existed in this scenario are discussed as follows.

Case Information and Relevance of the Issues

The above mentioned issues are the most favorable issues to have been existed behind the missing of controlled medications. This can be said by looking at the information provided in this scenario. Nurse M who is considered to be liable for this issue in controlled medications on the hospital ward is a single mother. She has the responsibility of bearing the expenses of her child alone. It is very obvious by studying this information that this job is very important for Nurse M to bear the expense of her living and her child's living (Schulz, 2003). Nurse M would never like to do any error ...