Professional issue
In order to handle such a situation, as the first but an important step, Ms. Colleen Prise had to think critically and subjectively regarding her own nursing capacity, whether she could provide sufficient nursing care for all the patients or not. As a professional conduct, the recognition of her limitations …show more content…
From her conduct during her shift, she documented only vital signs and did not record any information regarding nursing care of abnormal temperature and heart rate. She also did not record information about Mr. Lee’s pain score and the administration of analgesia, so it could be considered that she did not have sufficient nursing ability to look after the patient. As reported by research, for example, work experience 5-year nurses significantly relate to missed nursing care (Kalisch et al. 2011, p. 306). Moreover, it is stated by Code of Professional Conduct for Nurses in Australia that in order to ensure the quality of nursing practice, nurses must be familiar with relevant laws (NMBA 2008b, p. 2). Ms. Colleen Prise was responsible for performing a comprehensive assessment for her patients, and she had to make a decision based on a justifiable and evidence-based reason (NMBA 2007, p. 6). …show more content…
39). A benefit of the patient was obviously pain control, so Ms. Colleen Prise had to attempt to control Mr. Lee’s pain (Silva et al. 2016, p. 145). This was one of the main her responsibilities for post-operative management. However, her intervention was unclear because she did not record any information about the administration of analgesia. Considering the heart rate 126, the patient could be suffering from pain, which is closely connected to increasing heart rate (Chen & Chen 2015, p. 106). The existence of poet-operative pyrexia, temperature 38.9, also indicates certain kinds of undesirable outcomes, such as inflammation, infection and brain damage (McCallum & Higgins 2012, p. 22). Therefore, poor pain management of the nurse could be an ethical issue. Additionally, non-maleficence is described as ‘do no harm’ and nurses must not harm patients and must identify and remove the potential causes of harm, including physical, psychological and social harm (Johnstone 2016, p. 38). From this perspective, the nurse contributed to harming Mr. Lee because she could not realise a perforated bowel in an early stage, although she obtained his abnormal vital signs, which might be due to a surgical procedure, inflammation and ischemia in bowels (Al-Qurayshi et al. 2016, p. 75).If the nurse recognised and assessed his potential risks,