If a patient should die in the care of a nurse, should nurses' job be put on the line? Should nurses care more about patients' live beyond the ethical life and death scenario- should keeping their job be a motivation?

There must be more to this question than I can find to read. I'm looking at Jonz's question and oldnurse's response. Are there more posts I can't see. If a patient dies in the care of a nurse, why should the nurse's job be on the line. Dying is a natural part of the life cycle. And guess what, it happens a lot when people are sick enough to be in the hospital! As long as the nurse did every thing possible to avoid the outcome of death, and did nothing at all to hasten it, why would the nurse be perceived as at fault for a natural and unavoidable occurance in the healthcare field? Doesn't JACHO require nursing departments to keep current records on all nurses regarding CPR competency? If a nurse doesn't feel competent in CPR (like maybe it was almost 2 whole years since last being certified) can he/she not speak up and say, "I don't feel comfortable with this. Let someone else with more current training do the CPR." It takes guts to be professional enough to admit our limits, and it takes personal insight to know our limits in the first place. Perhaps there is more to this story than I know, though. Some hospital administrations are certainly willing to "sacrifice" a nurse (blame a nurse) if something goes wrong, and perhaps this nurse knew that about her hospital administration in refusing to meet with administration. Who knows!

How about the nurse who is on trial for allowing the teenager to be beaten to death by bootcamp guards? Is she partially to blame or is she exempt from the law?

Death can strike without warning in the form of an accident or an unexpected heart attack. The nurse can take care of a patient and all seem well and without any sighs or symptoms the patient dies. The nurse is not responsible for the death of a patient were good care was given. Some people are more concerned about the quality of life than about its duration. For them, the issue is not how long they live but the quuality of life. .