A registered nurse is caring for a patient 2 days after a colon resection. The patient called for assistance to go to the bathroom. Instead of waiting for help, the patient decided to get up with-out help. The patient fell but was not injured
After contacting the patient's primary health care provider, which action should the nurse take next? a. Nothing; the patient was not injured.
b. Call the ethics committee.
c. Submit an incident report.
d. Insist that the patient have a radiograph done.
C
When there is a deviation from the standard of care, such as a patient or visitor falls or an error is made, a nurse makes specific documentation of the event or incident in the form of an occur-rence/incident report. The nurse should complete an occurrence report when anything unusual happens that could potentially cause harm to a patient, visitor, or employee. Just because the pa-tient was not injured does not mean the report can be neglected. The health care provider orders follow-up care or treatment when necessary, not the nurse. The ethics committee is involved in ethical dilemmas, not occurrence/incident reports.
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