The normal juggle of life and daily high-stress situations are what many people in the medical field face. Because any wrong move could cost a patient’s life, nurses are always in a state of fight or flight.
Long-term stress often results in nursing burnout, and in turn leads to nursing negligence, a type of medical malpractice.
Several factors contribute to nursing burnout, and not just a stressful environment. Here are some of them:
Generally, nurses work on long and demanding 12-hour shifts. Sometimes, they put in overtime work or pick up extra days.
However, a study indicates that long shifts may be unhealthy. Moreover, working long hours contributes to fatigue and the risk of nursing negligence.
Nurses have the reputation for being selfless. Their work involves caring for other people most of the time. Some are so passionate about caring for others and tend to disregard their personal needs.
When a nurse doesn’t take time to care for himself/herself, this may increase the risk of medical malpractice.
When a hospital is understaffed, nurses are given more responsibilities. They are forced to take on a greater workload. In most cases, nurses have no choice but to rush from one patient to another.
When too much is put on a nurse’s plate, a nursing error can happen more frequently. A study shows that 64.55% of nurses of a certain hospital admitted to having made medication errors.
Nursing negligence happens when nurses fail to carry out their responsibilities the way a competent nurse would. If that negligence results in an injury or death of a patient, then it’s medical malpractice.
Monitoring one patient to another is one of the responsibilities of nurses in a hospital. They must notify the doctor on duty if there’s a sudden change in the patient’s condition.
In many understaffed hospitals, nurses don’t have enough time to spend with each patient. As a result, nurses often miss important changes in a patient, which is considered nursing negligence.
If a patient is injured from hospital equipment operated by a careless nurse, you may have a malpractice situation. Equipment misuse may include anything from burning a patient or knocking over a piece of equipment that hits them.
Medication errors can have devastating effects on a patient. In some cases, nursing burnout might be involved.
For instance, packages for different medicines can look very similar. A nurse running on autopilot will most likely make a mistake of administering a wrong medication unconsciously.
Mistakes happen. However, every patient is entitled to keep negligent nurses accountable.
It’s not just doctors who are held to a standard of care, but nurses as well. Many of the tasks we think are doctor’s responsibilities are tasks that nurses carry out.
If you or a loved one suffered an injury as a result of nursing negligence, call Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff, LLP today at 212-344-1000 or contact us online for a free and confidential consultation.
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