Nurses should be empowered to question a doctor’s decision if they doubt it because such questioning would help reduce errors in treatment, a doctor said at a panel discussion on Sunday.
The panel included doctors and nurses and the topic was communication between the two.
Chandramouli Bhattacharya, an infectious disease specialist at Peerless Hospital, cited an example to present his case.
A patient had been prescribed a medicine by a consultant, but the resident medical officer (RMO) who was present when the medicine was to be administered stopped it. It was later found that the RMO’s decision was wrong, Bhattacharya said.
This is where an empowered nurse could have set things right, Bhattacharya said.
“Ideally, the nurse in charge of the ward should have asked the RMO why the medicine was stopped. That would have led the RMO to rethink and he might have reversed the decision. The nurse did not raise the red flag here,” said Bhattacharya.
This was not an isolated case of a nurse failing to act at the right time, Bhattacharya said. The incident highlights larger issues of hierarchy, doctor-nurse relationship and empowerment of nurses, he said.
Many doctors, even if they have spent fewer years in a hospital than a nurse, do not take it well if a nurse questions their decision.
“The established notions are such that a nurse questioning a doctor’s decision is not taken well. But this must change. We are both working towards the same goal, which is serving the patient better and having a better treatment outcome,” Bhattacharya said.
“Questioning does not mean a nurse is challenging a doctor’s knowledge. It is just one of the many levels of checks. The idea is that if an error is being committed, it will be identified in one of these checks and can be stopped,” he said.
Bhattacharya spoke to Metro after the discussion about the points raised.
Nurses administer the medicines based on a doctor’s prescription. They check the vitals of patients, keep a tab on them when a doctor is not in the ward and raise an alarm when a patient needs immediate intervention.
Bhattacharya was speaking at Medicon International 2023, a medical conference organised by Peerless Hospital.
Smritikana Mani, dean of nursing at The Neotia University, moderated the discussion. Mani, a former principal at the College of Nursing at the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital, shared a similar opinion.
“Doctors and nurses must respect each other. No one is above the other. We have the same goal and we must work as a team,” she said.