Nursing Crisis Contributes to Medical Negligence

There are not enough nurses to fulfill health care needs in the United States. Because of the shortage of qualified nurses, many medical professionals believe that patient care is suffering. Patients share this concern: USA Today has reported that 32 percent of Americans fear for their own safety in U.S. hospitals because too few nurses are assigned to care for too many patients in general and specialty units.

Some hospitals are closing critical-care beds because there are not enough nurses to provide attention, and many parents fear babies and children are at risk in understaffed health centers. Some nurses who are admitted to hospitals for their own health care needs actually hire private nurses to ensure that they receive medications, therapies, and other attention correctly and at the right time.

One nursing incident

The parents of a child who suffered brain damage and quadriplegia that left him in need of 24-hour care filed suit against the hospital where he was born. A jury provided an award to the child because jurors were convinced that nurses had failed to adequately monitor the mother’s labor and timely report fetal distress to the attending physician.