Which of the following could result in the nurse being found negligent?
1. The nurse, while driving to work, passes the scene of an accident with obvious injury but does not stop.
2. The nurse administers the wrong medication to a client, who suffers no ill effect.
3. The nurse initiates a care plan to prevent skin breakdown and documents thoroughly, but the client develops a pressure ulcer anyway.
4. The client with a history of dementia and wandering crawls over the side rail and falls, and breaks her hip.
4
Rationale 1: Answer option 4 is correct because the nurse should not have raised the side rails if the client has a history of dementia and tends to wander, because it increases the risk of serious injury. The nurse in option 1 might have an ethical responsibility to act, but does not have a duty to the client involved in the accident, and so cannot be found negligent. The nurse in option 2 created no harm, which must exist in order to find the nurse negligent. The nurse in option 3 acted in the client's best interest. Pressure ulcers might not always be preventable in clients who are severely malnourished or have very poor perfusion, so the client's harm was not the nurse's fault.
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