Nursing documentation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Nursing supporting - Essay specimen(Ammenwerth et al., 2003 Audit Commission, 2002)A nurse from Coventry was recently removed from the national register after failing to custody accurate records for patients in her dish out. She was found guilty of seven charges of misconduct. The committee heard that she failed to ensure care plans were brisk for several patients covering issues such as diabetes, pain management and dietary needs. On one occasion, she failed to give notice (of) staff of a patients increased risk of hemorrhage following a drug error. The Nursing and midwifery Council (NMC) found the nurse had systematically neglected a basic and crucial duty to keep proper(ip) records for the management of patient care. (Griffin, 2004)And this is only one of the cases found in literature, in relation to the negligence, with which the nurses treat the vastness of making records. Castledine (2005) reports about the failures to carry on proper documentation in the Freda House. Freda House is set forth by him as the establishment for treating blind stack. Due to the improper records, which one of the nurses - phellem - was making, many patients and older people in the Freda House were mistreated and had health complications. As a result, The managers of Freda House decided to refer Bob to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) because of the poor explanations and excuses for his actions. He was charged by the NMC with (1) Completing medication records when the drugs had not been administered (2) wrong completing nursing records relating to wound dressings which had not been changed (3) Failing to change residents dressings while indicating that he had done so in the patients care plans (4) Failing to report at handover to the nurse in charge that he had not administered drugs or changed patients dressings (5) Failing to clean the eyes of a resident. (Castledine, 2005). Of course, this only proves how nurses have got accustomed to the thought that docu mentation is the skill second to nursing (Tingle, 2001), not understanding its importance for the patients health. The similar cases are also described by Tingle (2001), British Journal of Nursing (October, 2000), Johnston (1998), Moody (2001). It was surprising to read the work of Bjorvell, Wredling and Thorell-Ekstrand (2003), in which they have come to conclusion that most participants, regardless of group, perceived nursing documentation to be beneficial to them in their daily practice and to increase patient safety. Why then do we have so many reports of the health complications, which appear as a result of the misleading or false nursing records (Anderson, 2000 Charles et al, 2000 Tingle, 1998) some articles describe the importance of carrying correct nursing records. (Wright, 2003 Scottish Executive, 1999 Nursing and Midwifery Council, 2002 Dion, 2001) For example, Owen (2005) writes in her article, that Documenting patient care is extremely important in the community settin g as nurses usually visit patients alone, sometimes with coarse periods between each visit. The only way that the nurse can legally communicate the care that has been delivered is by writing effective records. Nursing records are usually held by the patient, enabling information to be divided up easily between visiting practitioners.