Patient Safety, Symptom Management, and Malpractice

Patient Safety and Symptom Management

• Maintaining a patient's symptoms is crucial.
• When making decisions, prioritize patient safety and preventing harm.

Malpractice

• Four components of malpractice:
  • Duty:
    • It was your responsibility to either do or not do something.
  • Breach of duty:
  • Injury:
    • Something happened to your patient.
  • Causation:
• Malpractice is not necessarily a sentinel event, nor is a sentinel event only.