Decision Making in Nursing Practice: A Concept Analysis Week 5: Ethical and Legal Implications You are a family nurse practitioner working in an outpatient primary care office of a large hospital system. The practice has been operating for over 15 years, and many of the administrative and clinical staff were hired when the practice opened. You have been in the practice for less than 3 months. In that short amount of time, you have witnessed several of the clinical staff engaging in heated arguments with each other, sometimes in the patient areas. You overhear an argument occurring today between two staff. You pick up a patient's chart and notice a very low blood pressure that the medical assistant failed to notify you about. When you confront the MA, she states that she was going to report the vital signs to you when she became engaged in the heated argument you overheard and forgot to notify you. Unfortunately, this pattern of behavior is not unusual in this practice. Working with sta

Medical assistant: Medical Assistants are upheld to ethical obligations and principles as medical professionals (vvc.edu, n.d). In the Code of Ethics of Medical Assistants, they are to respect confidential information as not to divulge personal information especially around the patient area. Obviously discussing personal information about a patient where other persons can eavesdrop is breaking the HIPPAA confidentiality. Failing to inform the Nurse practitioner about the low blood pressure right away also puts patient at risk for injury and harm which can also be identified as risk for negligence. The whole practice can be sued for malpractice if the patient suffers harm due to lack of communication in the interprofessional team and lack of professionalism. Nurse Practitioner: Since the patient is being cared under can be the nurse practitioner, failing to act accordingly and timely may jeopardize the nurse practitioner license especially if there is patient's injury or harm. The nurse practitioner may be sued for malpractice if she already established a patient- client relationship with the patient (Buppert, 2018). Since the nurse practitioner is new to the practice compared with the other healthcare team, she probably is more up to date about risk management responsibilities. Even if the NP is found not liable, it can be a devastating experience to ever have to go through litigation. Medical Director: The Medical director is responsible for everyone in the practice. If the practice gets sued for malpractice due to failure to act on timely manner as well as possible breach of confidentiality, the medical director may lose monetary gains and patients. The medical director seems to have failed in upholding its subordinates into the highest standard of care. The medical director may also faced litigation if the practice was sued for malpractice. Practice: Although it's unusual for patients to sue for breach of confidentiality as they are hard to prove, the word of mouth about perceived breaches of confidentiality can harm the community perception of this medical practice (Buppert, 2018). If the practice gets sued for malpractice, if there was a patient harm they may lose clients as clients may lose confidence in the

practice. Once a malpractice is filed against the practice, future patients may be wary of trusting this practice again. In a business perspective, dealing with litigation can be very costly. This may cost the business to closed down if bills aren't being paid if you're not making money because you're losing clients.

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