The main importance of this essay is to analyze and explain about a critical incident that occurred while attending a clinical practice at a hospital. To start, the incident will be briefly described and the people involved introduced (The names of the people involved have been changed for confidentiality).
The incident involved a 68 years old client (Mrs. X), who was admitted to the private ward. She had been diagnosed with cerebro vascular accident 3 years before and had a stage 4 pressure ulcer. The writer was assisting in her care and spend lot of time with Mrs. X, administering her medications, personal and wound care and nutritional support. Mrs. X needed blood transfusion due to low Heamoglobin. She is in the hospital more than 2years and some laboratory reports along with old documents kept separately. Recent reports only in patient file. In that, there is no report of blood group. A nurse, wanted to know blood group but she was lazy to open old documents. So, she sent a new sample for blood grouping. When blood report collected, it was ‘O’ positive and a nurse informed to Mrs. X family to bring donors of ‘O’ positive blood group (At which the writer was present). Mrs. X family said it was wrong report and client blood group is ‘B’ positive. At this time, she opened old documents and found Mrs. X family was right. Immediately a nurse called to laboratory and informed this. They re-checked and said it was a mistake and corrected it. Overlapping time, nurse informed this to other staff and they told to throw old (‘O’ positive) blood report. So, a nurse thrown it without informing to ward in charge. The next day ward in charge came to knew and shouted to the nurse and told to record incident.
The mute issues of this incident from the writer’s perspective are Mrs. X should have performed nursing assessment before assisting her care, negligence (no blood report, lazy to check) and no effective communication among the healthcare team and Mrs. X family. The incident was critical, as it falls below the standards of behaviour established by law, failure to take proper care and increased risk of harm. Reflecting and analysing of this incident also revealed the importance of accountable to the clients and family to provide quality care.