Legal Issue in Medical Field

Legal Issue in Medical Field
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Legal Issue in Medical Field
Just like ethical issues, legal issues influence the healthcare system and delivery of care. Over the past century, the evolution of medicine and delivery of care has improved drastically. The growth demanded legal regulations to protect patients and other stakeholders. The laws and regulations in healthcare not only protect patients and their families but also sets guidelines that healthcare professionals have to observe. Legal issues in healthcare often inform healthcare professionals and organizations what they cannot do and how to provide patient care. A person that violates local, state, and federal laws that protect delivery of care may be liable in a court of law. In this way, it is important to explore an example of a legal issue that may occur in health care and how it may impact the parties involved.
An example of a legal case in the medical field involves medication error. A 65-year-old patient went to the hospital and was admitted in the hospital with vomiting and nausea. The patient was supposed to be given filgrastim every day (Monk, 2018). However, during the filling of medication in the pharmacy, pegfilgtastim was selected by error and the attending nurse administered the medication without knowing. While both medications are administered by syringe to help in the growth of white blood cells, pegfilgtastim should not be administered daily. While admitted in the hospital for 11 days, the patient was given multiple doses of pegfilgtastim (Monk, 2018). The patient died on the 11th day after suffering pulmonary toxicity that caused acute lung damage.
The emerging legal issue in the case is medical negligence. Negligence refers to unintentional actions by the nurse or physician leading to harm (Zerwekh & Garneau, 2018). Often, negligence is equated to carelessness without the intention to harm. A medical professional makes a mistake in good faith while completing the medical standard of care or doing right by the patient. All the same, any failure in providing medical care that results in harm to a patient falls under medical negligence (Zerwekh & Garneau, 2018). In most cases, medical negligence is assessed by asking whether a rationally prudent medical professional would have done the same thing under similar circumstances (Sohn, 2018). In the case above, a reasonable, prudent physician may have counter-checked the medication two or three times before administering. The nurse began administering the medication without counter-checking whether the ...