WU Building a Culture of Personal Responsibility to Advocate for Patients Discussion

Consider the following event: A healthy boy age 13 who underwent a routine surgical procedure in a regional healthcare facility. The procedure took place on a Friday and by Sunday the child had died as a result of rapid organ failure. His decline was attributed to a medical resident who prescribed an adult dose of a post-surgical medication.

The mother of the child describes a situation where the resident and the “young and well intentioned nurses” did not recognize the incorrect dosage of the medication, were afraid to call the attending physician who was off during the weekend, and kept denying that there was a problem. She identified that even hours before her son’s death when his heart was failing, the nurses attributed the lack of a measurable blood pressure to faulty blood pressure machines and kept trying different machines.

I suspect, that during your time as a nurse you have experienced similar scenarios. Most of the time these situations do not have such catastrophic results. Sometimes they do.

The ethics of these situations are apparent. The question I am asking you to address and discuss is:

Using what you have learned from your experience and what you learned in this class, how does a leader and manager instill the confidence and courage in nurses to take action and address such problems/issues? In other words, how does a leader build a culture of personal responsibility to advocate for patients?