A patient’s condition whether good or bad, the physician should be notified especially on critical times. The role of a nurse is very essential to patient care. Sometimes nurses make mistakes in providing patient care and can be counted as a violation of the Nursing Practice Act or to any related rules and regulations of nursing. If you are an RN and such a situation happens, always remember that a nurse attorney can help.
At the time of the incident, an RN was employed as a Registered Nurse at a hospital in Brownsville, Texas, and had been in that position for two (2) years and two (2) months.
It was on or about October 10, 2019, while employed as a Registered Nurse, the RN failed to timely notify the physician regarding a critically high troponin level of 55.95 of a Patient that resulted at 12:07 and was received by the RN at approximately 13:20. Instead, The RN exceeded the scope of his practice by ordering a redraw of the aforementioned patient’s blood to obtain the troponin level again, which came back at 13:48 with a critically high level of 154.84. Prior to receipt of the results from the redraw, the RN verbally informed the physician of the elevated troponin level. Subsequently, the aforementioned patient was taken to the cardiac catheterization laboratory and underwent a percutaneous coronary intervention at 15:35. The RN’s conduct was likely to injure the patient in that failure to timely notify the physician regarding the critical laboratory value could have deprived caregivers of the pertinent information needed to make further medical decisions and resulted in a delay in care.
In response to the incident, the RN states that the patient initially had a Troponin level of 0.03 in the emergency department. The RN states that he does not recall exactly when he was notified by the lab of the elevated Troponin level, but he is sure it was not exactly at 12:07. When the RN received the result, he had a suspicion the result was in error given that the patient was in a mildly improved status with less chest pain upon arrival to the floor. The RN states that he did document the call the next morning, indicating he received the call about 13:20. She also states that because he believed the lab result was in error, he quickly redrew the test and resent it. The RN states that after resending the lab specimen, but before he received the result, he spoke to the physician on the unit and advised him of the elevated result. Lastly, she states that the physician told him that he was already aware of the result.
Therefore, as a result of the RN’s misconduct in the above incident, it caused the Texas Board of Nursing to place the RN and her license into disciplinary action. She should have sought assistance from a good nurse attorney to provide clarifications towards the case.
If you’ve ever done any errors or misdemeanors outside or during your shift as an RN or LVN, and you wish to preserve your career and your license, an experienced nurse attorney is what you need. Nurse Attorney Yong J. An, an experienced nurse attorney for various licensing cases for 14 years, can assist you by contacting him at (832) 428-5679.