Question

Sue T. is a nurse manager for medical-surgical units at a hospital. She is enrolled in a nursing master's degree program at the local university. As part of the requirements for a Nursing Management course, Sue proposes to conduct a study linking nursing interventions with nursing outcomes. She returns to her unit at night for two weeks to audit patient charts and collect the data she needs. She makes copies of the records that are particularly helpful and takes them home to write the final paper. As Sue is developing her paper, she realizes that the information she has collected may be helpful in completing her nursing staff performance evaluations. She decides to collect further patient outcome data for individual nurses to monitor their performance. Has Sue violated ethical principles by collecting data for a college assignment? Why or why not? Has she violated ethical principles by collecting patient data for employee performance evaluations? why or why not? What, if anything, should Sue have done differently in completing her assignment? What, if anything, should Sue have done differently in completing her employee performance evaluations?

Answer 1

• Sue has violated ethical principles by collecting data from the patient chart for the college assignment. Though she might be a nurse manager of the hospital but that position do not allow her to copy the records from the hospital for her personal use. She must have used proper procedure for collecting data. Her study is based on nursing intervention with nursing outcomes, for which, firstly she should obtain a informed consent from the institution for conducting a study and also should get an informed consent from the participant. Her data collection should be done based on observation, interview, or through written material from the participants. The study should conducted at the permitted time specified by the hospital and the availabilty of the participants. She do not have rights to disclose the patient chart details without their consent. While carrying out a study she should have taken in account about annonymity, confidentiality, informed consent.
• As a nurse manager she has the right to access the patient data for performance evaluation but as the perfomance evaluation system should be open and the nursing should also be made aware so ethically the nurse manager is doing it in a wrong way.
• The main aim of performance evaluation is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of nurses care resulting in improvement in quality of care.
• The nurse manager has to continously monitor and evaluate the performance of the staff nurse and guide them and give feedback for the performance.
• A nurse manager should have proper communication between the nurses and should know about their strength and weaknesses,and rate them according to their behaviour and reactions.
• She should also interprut whether the particular individual has attained the target or outcome of work.
• she should observe each nurse for the quality of care provided to the patients, the satisfaction of the patients and their families, and also the satisfaction of nurses can be evaluated.