extracted from stforum.
Nurse with 180 patients: System needs fixing too
I WAS shocked to read that a single nurse could be made to look
after 180 patients, especially in a First World nation such as
Singapore ('Nurse found negligent but coroner praises her'; ST, Jan
1
.
It is hard to imagine how any human being - however competent or
diligent - could provide the expected standard of care.
To put the issue in perspective, school students are generally
healthier than elderly inmates, yet no school would leave just one
teacher in charge of the welfare and safety of 180 students.
While the coroner may have found negligence in the administration
of a drug which the patient was allergic to, it is harsh that nurse
Grace Leong now faces the prospect of being struck off, while the
welfare home has presumably escaped sanction and will continue to
operate.
It is true that nurses - while human and thus fallible - owe a duty
of care to their patients. Yet care is not provided by individuals
alone, but by organisations and the systems set up therein.
When accidents occur, it is crucial to look not just at the
individuals involved in making the error but also the system and
organisation which permitted such errors to happen.
If there was negligence, we should also look at how a system was
set up which placed Madam Leong under such inhuman working
conditions.
When workers are overloaded and stretched to the point of
exhaustion, the shocking thing is not that such errors occurred -
it is that such errors did not occur with greater frequency.
Tan Wu Meng