Medicine / Nursing Case Involving Claims of Negligence (Case Study Sample)

Case Involving Claims of Negligence
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Case Involving Claims of Negligence
Death As Result of Overdose
A drug overdose can be said to occur in a patient if the physician administers an amount of a drug exceeding the conventional prescription. However, In this case, the death cannot be ruled to be as a result of an overdose as the amount of morphine administered to the patient was enough to relieve him of the pain he was undergoing after that accident. Instead, the death can be stated to be as a result of combined drug intoxication (CDI) (Mulheron, 2013). As stated in the case, the patient is said to have had a long history of drug and alcohol abuse; he even had alcohol and heroin in his system at the time of the accident. CDI occurs as a result of the simultaneous use of multiple drugs, whether such drugs are prescription, recreational, or over the counter drugs. In this case, after the intravenous injection of morphine into his system, the patient had a mixture of morphine, alcohol, and heroin in his blood system, a ‘lethal concoction.’ It is always a warning that opiate medications like morphine should never be mixed with alcohol, a mixture that can result in coma or death.
Since the patient was able to communicate, a negligence claim against the doctor can be successful as the doctor should have asked the patient about his history with drug abuse, as is common in emergency situations (Mulheron, 2013). The doctor could also have been able to feel the smell of alcohol emanating from the patient and used caution on what pain killers to administer to the patient. However, the doctor could build his defense based on the fact that the patient failed to mention that he was under the influence of an illegal substance such as heroin at that moment, a component that also transformed the morphine into a ‘killer drug.’
Death as a Result of Failure to Administer Blood.
Since the patient was conscious and termed as ‘alert’ at the time, he refused a blood transfusion, a claim for death as a result of failure to administer blood may not be successful against the physician. In the US, autonomy is used to refer to the respect for a person’s privacy and the right to be left undisturbed after making their decision on a matter. According to article 9 of the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, a patient who can express his or her wishes at that particular time have to be respected (Mulheron, 2013). Therefore, the patient, in this case, had expressed his stand on blood transfusion, of which the doctor recognized and hence, cannot be sued for negligence on that part.
Death as a Result of a Subdural Hematoma.
A Subdural hematoma is a common occurrence as a result of a severe head injury. In this case, the patient was involved in an automobile accident, and head injury might have occurred. However, the case does not state if any injury was sustained in the head after his examination in the medical-surgical unit. Brain scans reveal if a patient has had a subdural hematoma, which is relie...