Negligence In Health Care

The legal and ethical obligations of a health care organization is to follow the laws, regulations, and policies in place to provide confidential, quality care to every individual. Furthermore, every health care organization holds critical fiduciary duties to their patients. Which means that they, “have an obligation to those who have put trust in them.” (Jones & Barlett Learning, 2017, p. 433) In this case not only was HIPPA violated, but under Tort Law, Negligence could be applied to patient Burn’s case. In turn, medical malpractice and a HIPPA violation could be claimed by the patient. She could claim the HIPPA violation on the skilled nursing facility and the Negligence on the hospital. Moreover, ethically, the health care organization

(Jones & Barlett Learning, 2017, p. 427) Furthermore, for negligence to be proven, there must be four key factors involved: the negligent party must have a duty toward the harmed party, there must have been a breach of duty, the plaintiff must be able to prove the harmed party suffered injury or damages, and causation must be proven. (Jones & Barlett Learning, 2017) In this case, all four key factors can be applied. The hospital should have thoroughly reviewed Margaret Burn’s chart and realized the medications did not match the patient at hand, as well as, realized the patient’s symptoms and history did match the medication list given. Mrs. Burns should have been asked every drug she takes and at what doses on admission, especially due to her being alert and orientated. The name on the medication list should have been matched and identified to Ms. Burn’s name, identification number and other forms of identification. Furthermore, the physician, who reordered the medications, should have assessed the patient before reordering the medication list. He would have realized by assessing the patient physically and asking the patient questions, that they had the medication list did not match her health history or symptoms. In addition, the Nurses administering the medications should have questioned the orders by the physician. Moreover, the medical staff did not uphold to the, Standard of Care; hence, the breach of duty. The plaintiff can easily testify and prove that after three days of poor quality care, Mrs. Burns suffered tremendously physically, mentally, and financially. (Jones & Barlett Learning,