Professional accountability generally refers to an act of being answerable to oneself and to others for one’s own action. According to Chesterton et al. (2021), nurses are not just accountable for their actions to their patients but also to their employers and the nursing regulatory body under civil, criminal and contract law. The concept of professional accountability is closely related to negligence. Whereas professional accountability places a burden on the nurse to be held responsible for actions, negligence holds a nurse responsible for such which may have the propensity of causing harm to others. Professional accountability presupposes that a nurse owes a duty of care to patients and should act in the best interest of the patient and as such could be held responsible for professional negligence for breach of duty of care.
In the scenario provided, it clearly portrays an incidence of breach of duty of care, lack of professional accountability and gross negligence by Nurse Lope and Nurse Jim in their respective capacity. Ernstmeyer, & Christman (2022) opined that upon acceptance of a handoff report from another nurse, a duty is created to accept responsibility for patient and establish a nurse-patient relationship. Nurse Lope in the scenario could be said to have failed in her duty of professional accountability and could be held for willful negligence. This is because generally, the advent of technology has made it possible for nurses to identify patients and medications that have been prescribed through scanning of the bar codes of the medication as well as patient identity code. Most healthcare facilities have embraced this technology which lowers the incidence of medication error. In the scenario, Nurse Lope realized that one of the medications was not scanned and she went ahead to administer such medications.
Again, nurse Lope realized that Nurse Jim had given her wrong report stating that certain medications should have been given 30 minutes earlier but was discovered that the said medication ought to have been administered 3 hours earlier. The discrepancy in the information given by nurse Jim amounted to failure on his part to be accountable and could be seen as willful negligence knowing that his actions may result to harm on the harm. Nurse Lope could also be said to have violated her duty of care and professional accountability when she realized these discrepancies and went ahead to administer the medication.
Based on the scenario it is pertinent to state that a nurse should always recognize that he or she owes patients the duty of care as well as professional accountability to herself and others. My approach to dealing with the issue would have been different. In nurse Jim’s case, I would have administered the medications as at when due and if for any reason I was unable to do so, it behooves on me to give a sincere and accurate report to the incoming nurse and promptly report to the Charge nurse for proper action to be taken. On the part of nurse Lope, as soon as I discovered the discrepancies namely the late medication and improper scanning of medications, I would promptly report the issue to the Charge Nurse and seek advice on what to do regarding the late medication.
Incidence of negligence and misconduct are often managed by facility managers and in this case could be the nurse manager. Each case is usually handled depending on the severity of the misconduct or continuous negligence by a nurse. Where it is found that such nurse ought to have known such as in the scenario provided and the actions resulted to harm on the patient, it may warrant serious administrative sanctions or discipline for such act. Where serious harm occurred, it would result in reporting the nurse to the hospital administrator and other external disciplinary institutions which may result in more severe sanction.
Chesterton, L., Tetley, J., Cox, N., & Jack, K. (2021). A hermeneutical study of professional accountability in nursing. Journal of clinical nursing, 30(1-2), 188–199. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15539
Ernstmeyer, K., & Christman, E. (2022). Legal Implications In Nursing Management and Professional Concepts. Chippewa Valley Technical College; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK598383/