Policy and Regulation in Practice

Management and documentation from the Nurse Educators Service Organization has two shortfalls. The first shortfall lies in a nurse in a home health facility who needs to provide attentive monitoring or documentation. This negligence practically meant the patient experienced adverse events, which led to a civil lawsuit against the nurse and the healthcare facility in this instance as well.

The legal issues in the case could be negligence, abandonment of duty, and lack of accuracy at professional standards of care. Negligence is the omission of the level of care that a legally prudent person would typically have exercised in similar circumstances. Here, unsafe practices are constituted when the nurse does not come to monitor the patient system and document the patient’s status (Kim et al., 2021). Breach of duty is characterized when the healthcare professional is unsuccessful in delivering the proper medical care that they ought to have to a patient. Due to negligence in monitoring the patient accurately, recording the accurate data, and reciprocating the duty of care to the patient, the nurse needs to be found. This final element is the nurse’s failure to exercise proper standards of care, which could be construed as a legal issue in this particular instance. Nurses are accountable to the standards of practice set forth by their profession. This, among other things, means notifying supervisors that one regularly monitors patients for any changes and accurately documents their health conditions.

SAT1 — SAT Task 1: Nursing Quality Indicators

The author of the case study mentioned one of the regulatory mechanisms that govern the behaviour of nurses: the Practice Act, which defines the scope of nursing practice and outlines the standards of care for nurses (Buppert, 2020). The Nursing Practice Act envisages a prologue related to the pertinent issues of documentation requirements in the nursing area. These requirements elaborate on the necessity of timely and accurate documentation. Moreover, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects the patient’s health information, including behaviour and confidentiality tracking of the care provided (Edemekong et al., 2018).

When the Joint Commission’s standard, commonly and effectively recognized in the healthcare industry, is examined, it clearly explains that the patient’s care at the centre of the care given to them is also critical in preventing patient safety and quality. As mandated by The Joint Commission, healthcare institutions should implement policies and procedures for surveillance of their patients and “charting” their healthcare renditions in a timely, accurate and comprehensive way. The standards of working in the university may be affected, and the organization’s reputation will also be protected if the organizational members adhere to the standards.

The specific regulations, legal framework, and guidelines for the nursing domain govern nurses’ practice, which has two sides: meeting the established standards of monitoring and recording patients and providing safe and competent care. These standards, laws, and regulations set a framework for nurses and thus help provide safe and competent care. Inability to meet the mentioned standards can result in nurses facing legal and professional consequences such as being sued, dealing with disciplinary action, and being suspended from their licenses.

To eliminate the occurrence of evidence in the case and increase adherence to required rules, regulations, and standards, the hospital can employ some risk mitigation methods. The steps include training and educating nurses on proper techniques like recording, home health care regimes, and hospital regimens (McGowan et al., 2020). Additionally, the hospital can promulgate well-defined mechanisms and strategies for outpatient treatment, by which patients may be monitored, their records can be maintained, and they can continuously update health care providers.

Getting Students Ready for Standardized Nursing Exams: A Necessary Step

Moreover, the hospital may initiate quality assurance programs, which will be used to supervise the services given to the home health nurses to ensure that the standards provide every care; in case of any problem or issue, its detection will be immediate. The performance of periodic assessments and audits of home health service provisions will enable the establishment of measures for correcting identified lapses and addressing any compliance problems at the very budding stage before they get drawn out.

Actions the nurse could have taken to improve the outcome and increase compliance with the regulations, laws, or standards relevant to the situation include:

Regular monitoring: The nurse should have regularly assessed the patient’s status by measuring vital signs, symptoms, and the state of treatment response. This would have addressed the early detection of health issues that may be exacerbated.

Accurate documentation: The nurse should have acted within a specific code of confidentiality, endeavouring to do this by maintaining detailed and precise documentation of the care provided, including assessments, interventions, medications administered, and patient responses. Proper documentation ensures the comprehensiveness of care, representation to other healthcare providers, and case history for legal purposes (De Groot et al., 2019).

Adherence to protocols: This head nurse should have followed guidelines and rules of home health care, for example, established monitoring processes, documentation standards, and communication commissions with the healthcare team. This would have allowed the nursing staff to stay concordant, resulting in stable quality, standardization, and patient safety.

Communication: The nurse should have manifested communication skills in approaching the patient, the patient’s family members, and all healthcare providers involved in the patient’s care. Effective prompt and clear communication is critical to coordinating care, tackling the patient’s problems, and ensuring that the patient is in good shape.

Continuing education: Nurses must process continuing education and professional development to remain current with the latest home health care regulations, guidelines, and core. Distance learning for nurses enables them to upgrade their education, get appropriate information about the latest innovations, and overcome the challenges that come along with the modern dynamics in the field of healthcare.

In conclusion, the legal case study Nurse Case Study: There is a high failure rate in-home monitoring and insufficient documentation in home care settings, which emphasizes the need for adherence to standards of practice, legislation, regulations, and relevant industry standards. Risk mitigation is therefore considered a significant aspect of nursing practice. When nurses become aware of the legal concerns and regulations pertinent to their work performance, they can work towards fulfilling their responsibility for quality care and patient safety and reducing legal liability. Adopting risk mitigation strategies, complying with regulations, and ensuring proactive approaches in the care of patients should be focal points of nurses’ and hospitals’ care regimes for the prevention of unwanted outcomes and the maintenance of professional practice and conduct.

References

Buppert, C. (2020). Nurse practitioner’s business practice and legal guide. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

De Groot, K., Triemstra, M., Paans, W., & Francke, A. L. (2019). Quality criteria, instruments, and requirements for nursing documentation: A systematic review of systematic reviews. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 75(7), 1379-1393. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.13919

Edemekong, P. F., Annamaraju, P., & Haydel, M. J. (2018). Health insurance portability and accountability act.

Kim, M. J., Jang, S. G., Kim, I. S., & Lee, W. (2021). A study on the status and contributory factors of adverse events due to negligence in nursing care. Journal of Patient Safety, 17(8), e904-e910.

McGowan, J., Wojahn, A., & Nicolini, J. R. (2020). Risk management event evaluation and responsibilities. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559326/