Nurses are often the first to spot ethical breaches. So how can they feel empowered to speak up?
Jonathan Stewart was only about a month into his first nursing job when it happened.
He was working on a post-anesthesia unit taking care of patients who had just come out of surgery. One man was brought in after having a spinal fusion. But the doctors and nurses soon realized that something was wrong: instead of fusing vertebral segments three and four, they had operated on levels one and two.
They decided to redo the surgery and tell the patient that they had discovered issues at both vertebral segments, framing it as if they had saved him from having another procedure at a later date.
“This is what’s called the hidden curriculum,” Stewart said in an interview at the American Nurses Association annual meeting being held this week in Tampa, Fla. “I was struck by the misuse of power over patients when it came to concealing medical errors … and the misuse of informed consent.” Read full article here.
Featured in: Healthcare - Beth Kutscher News Editor
He was working on a post-anesthesia unit taking care of patients who had just come out of surgery. One man was brought in after having a spinal fusion. But the doctors and nurses soon realized that something was wrong: instead of fusing vertebral segments three and four, they had operated on levels one and two.
They decided to redo the surgery and tell the patient that they had discovered issues at both vertebral segments, framing it as if they had saved him from having another procedure at a later date.
“This is what’s called the hidden curriculum,” Stewart said in an interview at the American Nurses Association annual meeting being held this week in Tampa, Fla. “I was struck by the misuse of power over patients when it came to concealing medical errors … and the misuse of informed consent.” Read full article here.
Featured in: Healthcare - Beth Kutscher News Editor
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