NURSING: CASE STUDY

Nursing: Case Study

[Name of College]

Nursing: Case Study

Introduction

Establishing good relations with patients and convincing them to take the prescription on time has always been the top priority of nursing. However, most of the times nurse fails to convince or influence patient regarding their care. The relation of two different groups has also been studied in many researches. In this study we have selected a different perspective or case in which a patient is not satisfied with the treatment he is receiving and after taking the prescribed medication for three long days, the patient found no betterment. Thus, this annoys the patient and he blames the doctor for prescribing him wrong medication.

The case which we will study in this paper is as follows, a patient had returned to see the doctor after being previously prescribed a medication three days ago. The patient began by complaining that the medicines had not worked and this had been the second cream he had tried. He went on asking if the doctor knew what he was doing. The doctor apologised and said we can try something else; the patient became angry and told the doctor that he can not afford to pay for prescriptions like this. The doctor apologised and said with this type of illness it is a little trial and error until he finds something that works. The patient got up and said “well I will have to put up with it has I can't afford another prescription”. In this case the nurse focussed around how she could deal with expectations of patients in getting things right the first time; also in cost, being a reason for some patients not being compliant in taking medication.

This study was an interpretive analysis of written accounts by medical professionals who made mistakes administering medications. The study began by inviting medical professionals to describe their errors. Medicine dispensing is an inherently risky enterprise. In the opening account, a medical professional described giving the wrong dose of any medicine as devastated. As human beings, medical professionals make errors. Like other health providers, they work in environments that have become increasingly technical, complex, and chaotic, and thus, more amenable to error. Medical professionals learn that safe medicine administration is an individual responsibility and that the blame for errors ultimately rests with the person administering the drugs. Accurate administration of medications is such a deeply embedded principle of health care facilities that making these errors threatens the professional self, jeopardizing both identity and livelihood. It also means potentially harming another human being, thus violating the medical ethic to “do not harm.” Yet, it is important to understand that nurses often deal with such mistakes and still continue to care for patients. In this article, we examine medical professional's descriptions of their errors, their feelings about making them, and how they coped with failure.

Background and Significance

The contemporary epidemic of medical administration errors has proven to be impossible to quantify. According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), medical errors are ...