PICOT question

Answer

PICOT Question

Population (P): Healthcare professionals within a collaborative setting, with particular focus on physicians.

Intervention (I): Educating healthcare professionals about the roles of nursing practitioners.

Comparison (C): Current safety and quality scores.

Outcome (O): Improvement of safety and quality scores.

Time (T): Six months.

PICOT Question: In healthcare professionals, physicians included (P) what is the effect of education about the roles of advanced practice nurse practitioners in collaborative practice (I) in comparison to the current situation in which their roles are poorly understood (C) on improvement of care safety and quality (O) within a period of six months (T)?

69. QUESTION

 Ethical and Legal Implications

You are a family nurse practitioner working in an outpatient primary care office of a large hospital system. The practice has been operating for over 15 years, and many of the administrative and clinical staff were hired when the practice opened. You have been in the practice for less than 3 months. In that short amount of time, you have witnessed several of the clinical staff engaging in heated arguments with each other, sometimes in patient areas. You overhear an argument occurring today between two staff. You pick up a patient's chart and notice a very low blood pressure that the medical assistant failed to notify you about. When you confront the MA, she states that she was going to report the vital signs to you when she became engaged in the heated argument you overheard and forgot to notify you.

Unfortunately, this pattern of behavior is not unusual in this practice. Working with staff who cannot cooperate effectively can negatively influence your ability to spend time with patients, can impede the flow of patients through the office, and could impact patient safety.

Case Study Responses:
Analyze the case study for potential issues for members of the healthcare team from office conflict. Contrast the potential effects for each member of the healthcare team based upon the required readings from the week. Discuss the potential ethical and legal implications for each of the following practice members:
Medical assistant
Nurse Practitioner
Medical Director
Practice
What strategies would you implement to prevent further episodes of potentially dangerous patient outcomes?
What leadership qualities would you apply to effect positive change in the practice? Focus on the culture of the practice.
A scholarly resource must be used for EACH discussion question each week.

ANSWER

Ethical and Legal Implications for the Healthcare Team from Office Conflict

Conflicts in the workplace, especially that involving direct confrontation in the clients’ area, are a negative incidence that affects the performance of employees and impacts organizations negatively. The effect of conflict is even more serious in the hospital environment, where high patient outcome is expected to be achieved. Medical assistants have ethical responsibility to explore alternatives before making decisions. A confrontation does not support the value. The scenario described in this case happened in the hospital environment and the life of a patient was almost endangered due to the aftermath of such confrontation. APRN nurses have the ethical responsibility to provide good example to those looking up to them, especially considering leadership and behavior (Kim, Bochatay, Relyea-Chew, Buttrick, Amdahl, Kim & Lee, 2017). Medical directors are likely to face legal implications if conflicts in the organization results to harm to patients in any way. Nurse practitioners could face negligence of responsibility if harm comes to patient due to delay caused by confrontations of in the organization

The incident could have had serious implication to the patient resulting inlegal implication for the nurse practitioner involved. awkward. Thus, the nurse practitioner has the responsibility to care for the patient immediately and address the issues later in a well-organized structure that results in permanent solution for the disagreement among the two. The safety of the patient is paramount above everything else(Vesperi, Ventura& Cristofaro, 2020). Primarily, it is essential to make the hospital’s medical director aware of the safety issues in the hospital and suggest the creation of a system that would enhance effective communication and employee engagement to reduce possible occurrences of future conflicts among health practitioners in the organization. The safety concerns have significant effects on the practice of health delivery. Patient safety improves treatment outcome and satisfaction. Besides, it also results to loss of revenue for the health organization. 

Strategies to be implemented to Prevent Further Episodes

Primarily, it is important to first realize that a problem exists in the institution to develop ways of addressing the problem effectively. Leaders should be conscious of what happens in their environment and the effects of such occurrences to the well-being of the organization (Vesperi, Ventura& Cristofaro, 2020). This is a problem that affects all health practitioners in the organization and workers must come together to strike an understanding, especially concerning the expectations of the office behavior. Conflict is likely to result to discourse and prevent coherence that needed among health workers to realize positive patient outcome. As a leader in the organization, I would recommend setting standards in the organization concerning behavior policy and a strict implementation of the same. The organization should enforce an open door policy to allow workers to reach out whenever they are faced with challenges. It will enable them  to be free to discuss issues affecting them before they resort to direct confrontations with one another.

The Leadership Qualities I would apply to Effect Positive Change in the Practice

One observable challenge in the scenario is poor communication, especially with the health care provider for failing to communicate in time the patient’s blood pressure condition. Thus, I would educate the health care workers on the importance of delivering timely information concerning patient’s conditions. Secondly, I would resolve the conflicts among the workers creating a forum where workers express the challenges they have and how they can resolve them together. It is important to undertake open conversations concerning rules of the organization and encourage health workers to seek help of the management before engaging into confrontational conflicts. Being a good example as a leader helps in changing the perception of those who look up to you (Vesperi,Ventura & Cristofaro, 2020).