Lessons learned from litigation: The Nurse's duty to protect:Did nurses 'unreasonably ignore' a patient's risk of harm?

摘要

Albert Einstein has often been credited with saying, "If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity." Nurses have a legal and ethical duty to protect their patients from foreseeable harm. The following case illustrates this responsibility.NX was a young woman who underwent a laser ablation of genital warts at Cabrini Medical Center in New York City. While still under the effects of general anesthesia, she was transferred to a small, four-bed section of the recovery room. Shortly after her admission to the recovery room, the nurses admitted another patient to a bed two feet away from NX. The curtains were not drawn and there were no patients in the other two beds.