The sole priority and primary work of the doctors are to give proper and adequate medication to the patients. Through this, the doctors are guided by their ethics to ensure that their work runs as planned in saving lives ( Brown et al., 2017 ). However, sometimes, the doctors have found themselves in a hard place and rock in trying to solve the situation to help the patients. Furthermore, medical ethics limits their ability to resolve and act accordingly to circumnavigated a couple if circumstances in regards to the patient’s condition.
With the death of a 46-year-old man, the incidence of ethics application in these circumstances seems to have profoundly contributed to the negligence of the death of the drug addict patient. In this aspect, the estate has decided to sue the physician claiming the negligence at the hospital might have contributed to the death of the man. In this case, the patient might have died due to a couple of ailing issues such as lack of administering blood to the patient.
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Even though the doctors never, knew the previous medical history of the man, they were in a difficult moment to tell the correct condition of the man. However, through the observation of the old man’s condition, the doctors were able to figure out that the man needed the addition of blood. Furthermore, they were in a better position to know the blood type of the old man to avoid agglutination of the blood valves with clotted blood. In this aspect, through the idea that the patient needed an increase in blood, they should have carried a blood sampling to determine the previous medication and medicine used by the patient. However, this did not quite happen as the patient was administered with an injection of 15 milligrams of morphine intravenously.
On the other hand, the prolonged staying of heroin in the human system is another incident that resulted in the overdosing of the patient. In this case, the heroine remains in the human body system for more than seven days from the first consumption date. Through this, the patient had injected the blood system with the illegal drug the night before the fatal accident. In this aspect, heroin was still actively running in the blood system. On the other hand, the possibility of overdosing might have significantly occurred by the additional dosage administered during the processes. Furthermore, the changes were monitored and the decisions to move the patient from emergency department to medical-surgical unit.
Negligence of the of the other factor
Even though the patient might have refused for blood transfusion, the physicians were in the best position to examine and determine the fate of the old man. With the resentment that the patient needed additional blood, the physician should have acted according to the medical ethics and carried the blood transfusion regardless of the denial of permission from the intoxicated patient. Due to lack of blood administration, the claim is adequate to the death of the patient.
On the other hand, the probabilities of blood clotting outside the brain causing a subdural hematoma might also have contributed to the death of the patient in this case. The claim might be supportive since the physicians never took any action to carry out a scanning or an X-ray to determine the magnitude and damage of the accident under all circumstances.
Defense by the doctor
First and for most, the doctor was not aware of the drug history of the patient. Through this, the doctor only considered the situation in which the patient was in. Furthermore, the patient was apparently answering the questions without any hesitations. Secondly, the doctor had to refrain from the point of blood transfusion as the patient strongly denied the step of transfusion even though he did not understand the potential damage to the situation. Lastly, the doctor never saw any traces of unconsciousness to have an idea about the subdural hematoma. The patient was significantly answering the questions as asked.
The most successful claim against the doctor
In the bottom line, the claim due to the failure of blood administration might be effective against the doctor. From this, it was seen that the patient clearly needed blood, despite the objection from the intoxicated patient that doctor should have acted against the patient’s needs and saved his life.
Reference
Brown, D., Edwards, H., Seaton, L., & Buckley, T. (2017). Lewis's Medical-Surgical Nursing: Assessment and Management of Clinical Problems . Elsevier Health Sciences.
