life saving blood transfusion for a pediatric patient

Nursing 521 replies

Prompt 1

1-Brittany

For me personally, I believe I answered the survey questions with morality and policy based decisions. The question regarding a life saving blood transfusion for a pediatric patient provoked the most emotional response from me because I am a pediatric nurse, caring for children and advocating for them is my passion. i personally do not believe it is fair for a parent to make the decision to end a child’s life when it could be preventable due to religion because that deprives the child’s right to life and decision making due to age. I therefore fully supported the policy and opportunity for the ethics board to over rule that decision and I disagree with the fact that the physician may have the right to side with the parents and allowing an unnecessary  death of child to occur due to religion. If the child would have no quality of life even after receiving the transfusion that would be a different set of circumstances, however the question only stated the child simply needed a blood transfusion to sustain life, I therefore would disagree with the physician if they chose to abide by the parents decision. Being a pediatric nurse, I have dealt with similar situations that i viewed as unfair to the child, due to prohibiting the best possible care due to parent preference. For instance, the hospital I  previously worked at had a large population of Amish children. Culturally, many parents of Amish children due not believe in pain medication and I would often have to take care of children who had just been through major surgeries, procedures or severe injuries and could not medicate them appropriately even with non narcotic medications such as Tylenol or Motrin due to the parents choices. This was hard for me because my role is to advocate for that child and even with education on pain proper pain control and rational they would still refuse. I personally would be comfortable making my answers public because I answered mostly objectively and ethically based upon policy and medical practice rules and regulations. I believe moral inventory incidentally effects our roles and decisions as nurses, however if our own moral codes become confrontational with patient care then we must evaluate if that is the best field or position for us to avoid improper, subjective decision or lack of proper action for our patients. I think having ethical regulations and guidance makes these decisions easier to make and to do the right thing as nurses so to speak.

2-Kristopher

It is not easy to make confident decisions when selecting strongly agree, agree, or strongly disagree answers. Basically, one may think of you in the medical practice as an indecisive person (Escolar-Chua, 2016). As a nurse, it is necessary to be accurate about the decisions made, especially when it concerns the lives and welfare of other human beings. It then becomes a complex scenario when addressing the issues that have been raised in the surveys conclusively.

From the survey of a police officer bringing in an intoxicated individual, it is clear that making a proper decision would be a great concern. However, based on the case that has been presented, it may be quite difficult to make a conclusive decision that will address all the needs and serve justice both legally and medically (Gibson et al., 2020). Considering the situation that was presented, it was a gamble on whether reporting the situation of assault to an intoxicated individual was ethical and professional, and how it would impact on the relationship with the police at the individual level.

Anonymity may be the best way when it comes to providing the answers contrary to the free way. The first reason is that people would judge you as a medical practitioner in many ways, and for that case, one may easily lose the trust of medical receivers. This is a crucial concern in the field of nursing that must be maintained (Lazenby, 2017). Second, any form of the survey conducted whether anonymously or publicly will always generate feedback. This kind of feedback would be used in many other medical sectors to improve the outcome of activities. For this reason, conducting the survey anonymously would still generate results that would be used to improve the medical function. The most important thing at this point is to ensure that the kind of feedback that is provided for the surveys is as accurate as possible.

Prompt 2

3-Maria Katrina

According to Rodziewicz & Hipskind, “Active errors are those taking place between a person and an aspect of a larger system at the point of contact” (2020). Active errors are performed by people or professionals who are in the front line like nurses and physicians (Rodziewicz & Hipskind, 2020). Examples of active error include a nurse giving a wrong medication to a patient, a surgeon operating on the wrong side of the body, and phlebotomist missing the blood vessel when drawing blood. Latent errors, on the other hand, are errors in the organization or system that are present but may be unnoticed for a period of time without bad effect (Rodziewicz & Hipskind, 2020). Latent errors focus on unsafe practices and conditions that are surrounding the errors. Early identification of latent errors will help prevent active errors in the future. An example of a latent error is when a facility, specifically in ICU, has multiple kinds of IV lines which require different kinds of titrations which can create a scenario for potential error. There are several approaches to patient safety, and they all need proper training and education to acquire specific skills and knowledge.

4-Teresita

There are two main errors that are discussed in health care, latent and active errors. Latent errors are in my opinion the most dangerous because they tend to be less apparent , more often then not are ” almost mistakes” that can directly lead to an active error. For example, and this has happened to me a few times; When a nurse goes to pull Normal Saline for infusion and they go to the pyxis to get the sodium infusion only to find that in the slot where the normal saline is supposed to be and registered to be is D5W as opposed to NS. This is a latent error , something happened where the wrong bags where placed in the slot alloted for NS or where the pyxis was not properly programmed . This latent error can directly lead to an active error because if there is an  emergency situation and the nurse goes to grab the bag of NS and does not notice that it is in fact D5W and rapidly infuses it into a patient there could be very serious consequences for the patient . Tying this example to active errors is simple because active errors are committed by health care workers who are directly in charge of the patient many times they are considered to be ” human errors” or negligent error. So, the example above went from a latent error to an active error the minute the nurse infused the bag of D5W into the patient as opposed to the NS ordered.

In an attempt to reduce latent and active errors my hospital has a department dedicated to the investigation of mistakes that have already happened and near misses. This department is called Risk Management and when a mistake is made or “almost” made an incident report is written and looked into so that we can find where and how the mistake occurred so it can be prevented from happening again. Now, with this said this investigation is supposed to serve the purpose of preventing active and latent errors in a non-threating and educational and non-punitive manner.

All 4 replies must have references, APA and well done.