Question

Malpractice is negligence by a professional, but not all malpractice is negligence (Stubenrauch, 2007). Construct a legal situation in nursing, incorporating examples of the four elements (duty, breach, causation, and damages) needed to prove malpractice.

Answer 1

Malpractice is defined as a situation where the nurse or the staff fails to perform their duty which inturn causes a life risk to the patient.A legal situation observed in nursing are many that results in defame of both hospitala and the medical staff.Some of the examples are like improperly administering medicines to the patients either by giving a wrong dosage or wrong medicine,Failue in properly treating the blood flow situations after the surgery,patient has developed breathing problems but it went undetected and resulted in death etc.

One of the worse legal situations observed in nursing is a situation where failure to follow the standards of care or duty is not followed properly by not inserting the tubing for a patient who has undergone a lung surgery due to negligence.The example of breach is the nurse has disregarded the duty by not documenting the patient history which will surely cause a confusion to the nurse who continues the shift after her as the medication dosage might change.The example of causation the nurse not reporting to the doctor after the patient has fell on floor unexpectedly and leads to the injury.The example of damage is the result of calculating the patient's injury and its seriousness .