Wrong Operation Doctor
Respond to one of the following: Wrong Operation Doctor related to virtue ethics from your Pozgar text.
#1 Wrong Operation Doctor (ethics and integrity)
Hospitals find it hard to protect patients from wrong-site surgery.
Last year a jury returned a $20 million negligence verdict against
Arkansas Children’s Hospital for surgery performed on the wrong side
of the brain of a 15-year-old boy who was left psychotic and severely
brain damaged. Testimony showed that the error was not disclosed to
his parents for more than a year. The hospital issued a statement
saying it deeply regretted the error and had “redoubled our efforts to
prevent” a recurrence.
So, what happened? “Health care has far too little accountability for
results … . All the pressures are on the side of production; that’s how
you get paid,” said Peter Pronovost, a prominent safety expert and
medical director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Innovation in Quality
Patient Care. He added that increased pressure to quickly turn over
operating rooms has trumped patient safety, increasing the chance of
error.
Kenneth W. Kizer, who coined the term “never event” nearly a
decade ago when he headed the National Quality Forum, a leading
patient safety organization, said he believes reducing the number of
errors will require tougher reporting rules and increased
transparency.
Source: Boodman, S.G. (2011). Kaiser Health News,The Washington Post. Pozgar, 4th ed., p. 43
(integrity)
Write a 1- 2 page essay addressing the discussion questions posed for the one you selected. Be sure to clearly identify the news clipping you selected.
Adhere to APA formatting and cite all sources. Review the rubric for further information on how your assignment will be graded.
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Solution
Introduction
Integrity is important in the healthcare industry because of the different complex situations and professional challenges that healthcare practitioners, including nurses and physicians, are faced with in their day-to-day activities. Integrity ensures that health care practitioners uphold their responsibilities to their patients and execute all their professional duties (Sastrawan et al., 2018). This paper considers a case study and explores the different integrity issues in the case study
The case study of a wrong operation doctor highlights several integrity issues. The first integrity issue that is observable from the case study relates the health caregivers and the administration in the healthcare facility at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital failing to disclose a surgery area in which a 15-year-old boy was operated on the wrong side of his brain, resulting in brain damage for more than a year. It is therefore evident that despite the health caregivers and the leaders in the Arkansas Children Hospital realizing their mistake involving the surgery of a 15-year-old boy, they decided to cover up and not inform the patient’s parent of the significant error that had occurred and which would have a negative impact on their son’s health and general well-being. The cover-up by the leaders in the Arkansas children’s hospital and the health caregivers highlights a lack of integrity emanating from a lack of clear and honest communication, which endangers the 15-year-old boy’s life (Poorchangizi et al., 2019).
Yes, criminal charges should be considered in this case. The criminal charges will therefore be related to the cover-up of the health caregivers who performed surgery on the wrong side of the brain of a 15-year-old patient and the administration in the Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Criminal charges should therefore be considered in this case because regular malpractice charges would have been preferred to the healthcare facility if they had been upfront about the error that was committed on the 15-year-old patient immediately after it occurred. Covering up the error involving a brain surgery that was performed on the wrong side of the brain of a 15-year-old patient for more than a year clearly highlights an offense by both health caregivers and administrators in Arkansas children’s hospital that warrants criminal charges.
I chose to respond to this story because such a story represents a frequent occurrence among many healthcare facilities where health caregivers and administrators in certain facilities have been involved in covering up for errors to avoid malpractice lawsuits. In most cases, the cover-up for certain errors in a healthcare facility has therefore resulted in significant and many times irreversible damage to patients that are involved in such cases. The covering up of errors in healthcare facilities shows a blatant disregard for human life and erosion of important values such as integrity in healthcare services.
Integrity is displayed in my clinical setting in many ways, including treating others with respect, upholding and focusing on honest communication, following through with commitments, holding myself and others accountable, and upholding ethical and professional standards (Sastrawan et al., 2018). Honest communication between health caregivers and patients and their caregivers with each other is a crucial aspect of integrity. Honest communication allows the health caregivers to remain trustworthy and genuine. On the other hand, upholding ethical standards is an important component of enhancing integrity in a clinical setting. Ethical standards act as a guide on how to deal with patients and can play a significant role in resolving dilemmas that could threaten the integrity of health caregivers and a healthcare facility (Sastrawan et al., 2018).
Conclusion
In summary, the case involving a 15-year-old boy from the Arkansas Children’s Hospital displays an incident in which both the administration in the health care facility and the healthcare givers did not act with integrity. As a result of lacking integrity, the administrators and health caregivers in Arkansas Children Hospital could be liable for a criminal charge.
References
Poorchangizi, B., Borhani, F., Abbaszadeh, A., Mirzaee, M., & Farokhzadian, J. (2019). The importance of professional values from nursing students’ perspective. BMC Nursing, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-019-0351-1
Sastrawan, S., Newton, J. M., & Malik, G. (2018). Nurses’ integrity and coping strategies: An integrative review. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 28(5–6), 733–744. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.14702