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Confronting Bad Ethics Case Study

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Confronting Bad Ethics
Why does physician-patient communication matter in healthcare? During my nursing school pediatric clinical rotation, one of the patient’s I had the opportunity to provide care for, I will call her Sophia for privacy purposes, was in the pediatric unit recovering from surgery to remove a four-pound trichobezoar (hairball) from her intestines. Sophia was four days postoperative at the time and was on the unit for the purpose of being monitored in order to ensure she was recovering well after the procedure. Recuperation seemed to be taking longer than what would be expected for Sophia and her incision site was draining copious amounts purulent fluid. Because of the reports from Sophia’s nurses along with the residents, the physician who performed the surgery ordered an antibiotic regiment to treat the apparent infection Sophia had acquired.
After receiving the first dose of the …show more content…

This nurse-physician partnership in the management of medication has been correlated with improved patient results (Gabe et al.). Sophia’s nurse in this situation did what she was legally and ethically obliged to do, but the physician would not reciprocate his part. It placed Sophia’s nurse in a hard position as she had strong feelings, as well as multiple signs of how the antibiotic was not a good match for Sophia. She knew that if she was to administer the antibiotic to Sophia again that Sophia would be in pain and would be putting her in danger as her body could not handle the medication and would have stronger reactions to the medication each time her body was exposed to it. Sophia’s nurse did everything she was legally and ethically supposed to do, but she wasn’t receiving any support from her patient’s

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