Decision Making in Nursing Practice: A Concept Analysis
Week 5: Ethical and Legal Implications
You are a family nurse practitioner working in an outpatient primary care office of a large
hospital system. The practice has been operating for over 15 years, and many of the
administrative and clinical staff were hired when the practice opened. You have been in the
practice for less than 3 months. In that short amount of time, you have witnessed several of the
clinical staff engaging in heated arguments with each other, sometimes in the patient areas. You
overhear an argument occurring today between two staff. You pick up a patient's chart and notice
a very low blood pressure that the medical assistant failed to notify you about. When you
confront the MA, she states that she was going to report the vital signs to you when she became
engaged in the heated argument you overheard and forgot to notify you.
Unfortunately, this pattern of behavior is not unusual in this practice. Working with staff who
cannot cooperate effectively can negatively influence your ability to spend time with patients,
can impede the flow of patients through the office, and could impact patient safety