Terminating the Relationships between a Physician and a Patient
It must be admitted, though, that medical issues are not the only reason that may trigger a termination of relationships between a doctor and a patient. True, these relationships are traditionally terminated once the physician’s services are no longer in need, the physician has been withdrawn from the case, or the physician has been dismissed by the patient.
The steps mentioned above, however, must be backed up with sufficient reasons; otherwise, the relationships cannot be terminated. This is the point at which the medical issues walk into a territory of medical ethics at best, criminal justice at worst.
Among the strongest arguments that may result in the physician’s dismissal from his or her work, the ones that point at the obvious conflict between a particular situation and the existing code of medical ethics or law must be mentioned. The most common reason is the inadequate services provided, of the doctor’s incompetence.
Sadly enough, even nowadays, the instances of negligence do occur on a regular basis, resulting in severe health damages. Negligence is the second most popular source of conflict between a doctor and a patient resulting in the dismissal of the former. A bribe is another common reason for dismissing a physician on a legal basis. The last, but definitely not the least controversial, is the sexualization of the patient-physician relationships.
While the former three can be classified as legal offence, the given one falls under an umbrella of ethical code violations. At the given point, it will be logical to ask, though, whether it is only the physician to be responsible for the termination of relationships with the patient. Indeed, in the second and the fourth example provided, the patient is obviously responsible for the problem as well.
Nursing and Justice: When Healthcare Involves Legal Issues
Although people, as a rule, rarely relate healthcare to legislation, the former is for the most part coordinated by the later. More to the point, a number of issues regarding patient treatment have been blown to the epic proportions, reaching the point where these issues provided reasons for new laws or amendments to the existing laws to be created.
Fernandez v. State.
Perhaps, one of the most problematic issues in healthcare, the process of watching over a patient presupposes tackling a number of problems and answering numerous tricky questions, one of these questions being how far the precaution measures have to be pushed by the hospital staff and whether a nurse has the right to leave the patient even for a moment.
According to the case details, Dolorez Jones was assigned with watching over Amina Fernandez, a woman who had committed a number of suicide attempts. It is notable that Ms. Jones had no other patients but Ms. Fernandez. One day, when Ns. Fernandez seemed to be asleep, Ms. Jones left the room fin order to go to the bathroom after a thorough search of the room for any objects that could be used as weapons.
After returning to the room, Ms. Jones found the patient on the floor, with severe injuries. As it turned out, the patient stabbed herself with a knife (Pozgar, 2011). The claim was dismissed without costs, seeing how it was unreasonable to demand that the state healthcare should provide employees to watch over every single move of their patients all day long.
It must be admitted that the given case has finally pushed the envelope regarding what the responsibilities of a healthcare nurse are. Traditionally, a healthcare specialist is to take the blame for an accident. The given case, however, has finally proven that patients are to be responsible for their health as well.
Reference List
Pozgar, G. (2011). Legal aspects of health care administration. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.