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On Concealing Mistakes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2021

Jane Greenlaw
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Extract

What happens when a nurse is ordered to do something illegal or unethical? What should a nurse do when ordered to falsify a patient's record? Is her behavior justified because she is following orders from a superior?

These important and troubling questions were raised but left unanswered by a recent Connecticut malpractice case. The case has received much attention because the verdict awarded the plaintiff— $3.6 million — is the largest in the history of the state. The case should interest nurses, not because of the record-making verdict, but because of ethical problems raised by the behavior of the attending staff.

Type
Ethical Dilemmas
Information
Nursing Law & Ethics , Volume 1 , Issue 8 , October 1980 , pp. 5 - 6
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1980

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References

1. Pisel v. Stamford Hospital, Connecticut Supreme Court, April 22, 1980.Google Scholar
2. See, e.g., Rothman, D.A. and Rothman, N.L., The Professional Nurse and the Law (Little Brown and Co., Boston, Mass., 1977) for a discussion of the disciplinary powers of licensing boards.Google Scholar
3. People v. Smithtown General Hospital, 402 N.Y.S. 2d 318 (New York, 1978).Google Scholar
4. For a fictionalized account of an actual malpractice case involving physicians and nurses who rewrote part of a patient's record in order to conceal their own negligence. see Reed, B, The Verdict. Simon & Schuster (New York 1980).Google Scholar