Professional Nursing

Wit Paper

As sad as it is, I do believe the movie portrayed some very real and true issues that are happening today in health field. One of the things that really struck a nerve with me is how very little information the team provided to the patient regarding her plan of care. I believe that the first mistake the doctor made was to assume that the patient was familiar with the medical terms he was using to explain her condition. He also didn’t allow her a choice as to what care she wanted, if any. He assumed that she wanted to do chemotherapy, offered her an informed consent to sign without properly explaining the procedure, the risks, the medication and the side effects. Considering that they caught the cancer in the last stages, there is no question if she’s going to die; they did no teaching as far as advanced directives were concerned.

I also didn’t appreciate that the student doctor performed a pelvic exam without informing her; also the fact that he was a student of hers, I can imagine that she probably would’ve preferred if someone else had examined her. It was very unprofessional, and they violated her rights and privacy when the group barged in on her without knocking, they started touching her all over without first getting her permission to do so. On top of that, they were talking about her in her presence as if she was not there.

This showed a lack of respect for the patient, her wishes and just as an individual. It also showed that there’s no real relationship between her and her doctor. The relationship between the staff doesn’t seem to be a good one either. This can also be shown where the nurse tried to advocate for the patient, asking for the dosage of chemotherapy to be reduced and the doctor felt the patient should still be given the full dosage. He didn’t even stop to consider how feeble and ill she was. He was more interested in pumping the medication in her as opposed to what the medication was doing to her. I believe if the nurse had gone to someone higher than the doctor, she might’ve been able to advocate better for her patient as opposed to accepting defeat.

It is heartbreaking that in this day and age, some patients are actually treated as if they are not human beings. As nurses we are taught to be compassionate and caring; not many people are. I had a car accident in June 2015 while I was 8 months pregnant. I ended up having a 2 days hospital stay due to early contractions. Being on the maternity unit, I expected that it would’ve been busy; but my morning nurse was something else. She would come, say good morning and that’s it for the rest of the day, until she’s leaving. My night nurse, however, gave a whole new meaning to the word nursing. She was caring, compassionate; everything one could ever want in a nurse. She was in the room every few minutes just checking on me, offering help, or if the monitor gave some signal she’d be in the room. Whereas, in the day, I took off the EFM and the nurse still does not show up to the room.

The movie pointed out a few unprofessional behaviors and showed that, except for one individual, the team did not truly have the patient’s best interest at heart. They didn’t treat her as if she was an individual, it was like she wasn’t able to make her own choices..