Read the following scenario and respond to it as a risk manager. Mr. And Mrs. Wa
ID: 413622 • Letter: R
Question
Read the following scenario and respond to it as a risk manager.
Mr. And Mrs. Watros came to the Memorial Hospital for the delivery of their first child. While Mrs. Watros was in labor, the couple had to wait for nearly two hours to get a room. During that time, no hospital nurse attended to her. As the waiting room was full of patients, an exhausted Mrs. Watros sat on the floor. Mr. Watros reported this to a nurse. The nurse responded that it was past her shift, and she could do nothing.
These problems were later reported to a physician. The physician said, “It is just the way things go wrong here sometimes. You just have to get used to it.”
After delivery, the nurse carrying the infant slipped. The baby was unharmed. The explanation given was, “there was disinfectant fluid on the floor, which makes the floor a little slippery.”
On discharge, Mr. and Mrs. Watros decided to sue the hospital. The physician admitted negligence and poor treatment, but did not see a reason to apologize.
Put yourself in the position of all the people involved (as well as the hospital), and describe what could have been done differently
Your focus as a Risk Manger is prevention and your analysis should be directed at preventing the intial action as well as re-actions.
Explanation / Answer
Mr and Mrs Watros have full right to sue the hospital and its staff on their behavior. The hospital had a very bad management of its staff and also the staff including the physician was very rude to the Watro’s and also not apologetic for their behavior.
None of the hospital staff have right to say no to the patient to attended in the critical situation, and having Mrs Watros finally comforting herself by sitting on the floor was a very bad image of an hospital.
Nurses no matter what the timing of their shift is, if a patient in there hospital is asking for the support, are liable to manage a help for them, instead of nurse saying that she is done with her shift, she could have redirected them to the nurse working on that shift.
Seeing the situation of the staff in the hospital, no matter how busy they are, Mr & Mrs Watros, should be compensated for such behavior. Most importantly, hospital and specially physician should apologies for their behavior, because for both Watros, it was a difficult time, and they must have gone an enormous amount of mental torture because of hospital behavior.
Now let’s keep our self in the shoes of Nurse.
Nurse1 – the one who said that his/her shift is over. As already mentioned above, no matter what would be the shift timing, the nurse if someone is asking for her help in that situation, she should have focused on solving the problem, she could have easily directed the Watros to the next nurse in charge, or she could have herself, managed a decent place for Watros to wait. And such behavior was highly unacceptable.
Nurse 2- The one who slipped, well it was not actually her fault and in fact she protected the baby during the fall, yes she could have been more careful while taking the baby to their parents, but as mentioned in the case, it was a busy day. The problem here was of cleaning staff, they should have cleaned the floor asap in such situations.
Physician – In my opinion she was very rude t the Watros and she should be the one who should apologies to them. No matter how bad things go in hospital, she should be sympathetic to her patients.
She should have done something in her reach to help them, and by not doing so, she herself made a very bad impression of herself and the hospital.
Being a physician, when the first nurse said, she is out of her shift, physician could have arranged for the other nurse to look after Mrs Watros
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