A Nurse’s Legal Duty to Discern Potential Harm and Protect Patients

Illustration by Janet Hamlin for AJN. Illustration by Janet Hamlin for AJN.

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor

The November installment of AJN’s Legal Clinic column by nurse and attorney Edie Brous, “Lessons Learned from Litigation: The Nurse’s Duty to Protect,” describes a case in which nurses were held responsible for not adequately protecting a sedated patient from a sexually predatory physician. The case description begins this way:

NX was a young woman who underwent a laser ablation of genital warts at Cabrini Medical Center in New York City. While still under the effects of general anesthesia, she was transferred to a small, four-bed section of the recovery room. Shortly after her admission to the recovery room, the nurses admitted another patient to a bed two feet away from NX. The curtains were not drawn and there were no patients in the other two beds.

A male surgical resident, Andrea Favara, entered the recovery room wearing Cabrini scrubs and Cabrini identification. Residents were not directly assigned to the recovery room and were seldom called there. The nurses knew all of NX’s physicians but did not know Favara; he wasn’t one of NX’s physicians . . .

The details that follow are disturbing. After describing the case and the failure of nurses to confront this unknown physician or actively monitor his […]

2017-06-22T18:59:56-04:00November 7th, 2014|career, nursing perspective, Patients|0 Comments
Read More

Nurses, Brittany Maynard, Methods of Hastening Dying: No Easy Options

By Amanda Anderson, a critical care nurse and graduate student in New York City who is currently doing a graduate placement at AJN two days a week.

Last weekend, 29-year-old Brittany Maynard died, in her bed, in her bedroom, with her husband and immediate family beside her. I learned of her death on Twitter, along with millions of other readers. Several weeks earlier, Maynard had publicly announced, in a YouTube video, the way she planned to end her own life: using a lethal dose of medications prescribed to her for that purpose.

Maynard, while a compelling public advocate, is not the first to choose to die this way. Compassion and Choices, the organization that worked with Maynard to publicize her choice, lobbies for the drafting and passage of “death with dignity” laws, which currently exist in some form only in Oregon, Washington, Vermont, New Mexico, and Montana. Arizona.

In Oregon, where Maynard moved in order to be able to legally end her life before she was incapacitated by the effects of terminal brain cancer, approximately 71 other people made the same choice in 2013, the most recent year of reported data—the peak of a gradual increase from the law’s inaugural year of 1998, when 16 people did so.

Illustration by Denny Bond for AJN. All rights reserved.

2016-11-21T13:03:35-05:00November 5th, 2014|Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement|8 Comments
Read More

Presence, Improvisation, Dark Humor: Crucial Skills of a Hospice Nurse

Illustration by Pat Kinsella for AJN. Illustration by Pat Kinsella for AJN.

Here’s the start of “Molly,” the Reflections essay in the November issue of AJN, written by hospice nurse Thom Schwarz.

Late evening, early spring, the peepers not yet trilling. I am in my car, rain streaking the windshield, reading a New Yorker essay about war writing, an ironic distraction from my visiting hospice nursing work.

This is a piece that doesn’t offer any easy answers for the facts of suffering and death. But it does posit a certain consolation in staying present, undaunted, engaged, and resourceful when faced with the power and mystery of each patient’s encounter with impending death.

All Reflections essays are free, so give it a look.—Jacob Molyneux, senior editor 

2016-11-21T13:03:36-05:00November 3rd, 2014|narratives, Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement|3 Comments
Read More

AJN in November: Palliative Care, Mild TBI, the Ethics of Force-Feeding Prisoners, More

AJN1114.Cover.OnlineAJN’s November issue is now available on our Web site. Here’s a selection of what not to miss.

Palliative care versus hospice. For many seriously ill, hospitalized older adults, early implementation of palliative care is critical. These patients often require medically and ethically complex treatment decisions. This month’s original research article, “Staff Nurses’ Perceptions Regarding Palliative Care for Hospitalized Older Adults,” found that staff nurses often confuse palliative and hospice care, a fact that suggests a need for increased understanding and knowledge in this area. This CE feature offers 2.5 CE credits to those who take the test that follows the article.

Mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) can have profoundly negative effects on quality of life and can negatively affect relationships with family and caretakers. This issue’s other CE feature, “Mild Traumatic Brain Injury,” reviews the most commonly reported signs and symp­toms of mild TBI, explores the condition’s effects on both patient and family, and provides direction for devel­oping nursing interventions that promote patient and family adjustment. Earn 2 CE credits by taking the test that follows the article. To further explore the topic, listen to a podcast interview with the author (this and other podcasts are accessible via the Behind the Article page on our Web site or, in our iPad app, by tapping the icon on the first page […]

2016-11-21T13:03:37-05:00October 31st, 2014|career, Nursing, nursing perspective|0 Comments
Read More

Ebola: A Role for Nurses in Sharing the Facts

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Screen Shot 2014-10-29 at 12.27.27 PMThe current Ebola crisis has everyone concerned over transmission, and rightly so. The public has been in a quandary as to who and what to believe. I can’t say I blame them. We should have been better prepared and anticipated that, given the situation in West Africa, we would eventually see a patient with Ebola present to a U.S. hospital ED (or clinic or urgent care center). What’s surprising is that it didn’t happen sooner.

I’d thought fears about widespread transmission of Ebola had abated after no more new cases arose from that of Thomas Eric Duncan in Dallas: his family, who were in the apartment with him during the time he was sick, did not contract Ebola and have since been released from quarantine; the two nurses who became ill treating Duncan have now been declared Ebola free and none of their contacts have become ill; no other nurses who provided care for him have fallen ill.

But with the onset of confirmed Ebola in a New York physician who had recently returned from caring for Ebola victims in West Africa, fears of widespread contagion resurfaced. Craig Spencer had been self-monitoring his symptoms while he went about his life; when he began to feel ill and developed a low-grade fever, he initiated a controlled transport in isolation […]

2016-11-21T13:03:37-05:00October 29th, 2014|career, infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing perspective|2 Comments
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
Go to Top