Peer response on Negligence and Malpractice.

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Respond to peer!!!!!! Here is the actual post. Then there will be a peer question. Respond to the question.

Negligence and Malpractice

Nurses are not entirely to blame for most lawsuits for negligence and malpractice. Partly, hospitals and nursing care managers are to be blamed because sometimes they fail to give nurses proper education and develop appropriate guidelines outlining the appropriate standards of care regarding the use of hospital equipment, including ventilators. It is important to note that ventilators are sophisticated machines requiring adequate training of those involved in their direct operation to ensure desirable outcomes and reduce harm to the users (Williams & Sharma, 2020). Henceforth, as the nurse-manager for a skilled nursing facility would be accepting patients needing long-term ventilator support, I will develop a plan touching on several aspects.

Considering that ventilator machines take various models, the first critical aspect of the plan would be ensuring that all relevant personnel is regularly educated on the machine's fundamental features. Under this aspect, various education programs regarding ventilators' use would be created within the hospital and equipped with ventilator machines and experts to take all the nursing staff through training (Williams & Sharma, 2020). As part of the hospital policy, any new team hired caring for ventilated patients will be required to pass through the education programs before they start working. Still, every staff would be required to take continuing education programs on ventilation management after every year, depending on the yearly assessment done regarding the effective use of ventilators in the hospital (Williams & Sharma, 2020). The plan would also incorporate schedules for outside educational seminars for all healthcare professionals involved in caring for ventilated patients.

The plan would also specify a ventilator expert who would be assessing all staff for competence in several facets of the ventilator. This would include the capacity to apply a mechanical ventilator, manage the airway, initiate a ventilator, monitor the ventilator, recognize and report patient-ventilator interactions, manage alarm settings, and ability to wean and extubate ventilators effectively (Manthous, 2016). This would be done whenever novel equipment would be introduced in the hospital.

Furthermore, the plan would incorporate the guidelines and protocols concerning the use of ventilators. One critical guideline, which all the involved personnel would be frequently reminded of, would be the need for them to ensure proper interprofessional communication when looking after ventilated patients. The plan would outline how specific patient-ventilator information would be handed off or shared with a novel shift staff caring for the patient. The program would specify a particular person who would be conducting rounds to ensure that all the involved personnel has a proper understanding of the ventilated patients (Williams & Sharma, 2020). Simultaneously, the chosen personnel should do shift rounds to offer information to the staff's novel shift about patient conditions.

Ensuring interprofessional communication combined with the guideline on how ventilators should be distributed among patients would be part of my plan to minimize negligence or malpractice risks when using ventilators. It is important to note that lack of information is the most significant contributor to malpractice. With proper communication among the involved personnel, it is unlikely that one would miss any information (Williams & Sharma, 2020). Regarding the effective distribution of ventilators, which has been linked with most lawsuits involving ventilators, the plan would establish appropriate care standards depending on several factors. I would review all the hospital's state's specific laws and policies regarding the equal distribution of medical resources and compare them with the required nursing standards of practice. I would also conduct a survey on the involved personnel and various patients and families to get their views regarding the effective allocation of resources. Later on, I would combine multiple views and pick care standards that depict little conflict with the state's laws. Those are the standards that would be implemented in the hospital. However, the care standards would be subject to change depending on the patient outcomes.

References

Manthous, C. A. (2016). Is failure to awaken and wean malpractice? Journal of Critical Care, 36, 306-310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrc.2016.04.029

Williams, L. M., & Sharma, S. (2020). Ventilator safety. StatPearls [Internet]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK526044/

PEER QUESTION!!!!!! RESPOND TO THIS QUESTION

I'm sorry I'm not sure I fully agree with your first part of your post stating it's not nurses fault, but hospitals and managers for not giving adequate education. Isn't it our duty as a nurse to own our own practice? If you as a nurse feel you don't know something adequately enough to perform the duty, shouldn't you ask first? We as nurses are professionals and the blame shouldn't lye on someone else's shoulders, right?