Injuries in the Hospital

Legal Aspects of Health Care Administration

One of the platforms upon which the law enforcement agencies and the healthcare providers interact on frequent occasions is the treatment and handling of the patients who might have been injured outside the hospital and brought in for treatment, or even sustained the injuries from within the hospital altogether in the process of general medical care, surgery or drug administration. There are OSHA regulations that guide the reporting, recording and handling of such events within the hospital settings.

The following are the injuries that hospitals are required to formally report to the local law enforcement authorities or the police department for the city within which the treatment took place (UNC School of Governance, 2011). If there are patients brought into the hospital with wounds and injuries resulting from apparent gunshots or any other type of discharge from a firearm, then these must be reported by the hospital administration to the authorities. Any illnesses that result from poi noising of the patient must also be reported to the authorities and this involves patients brought in from outside or those already within the hospital care. The other injuries that need to be reported are those sustained from knife stabs or any other pointed or sharp instrument and if, in the considered opinion of the physician a criminal act was the perpetrating factor to the injury. The illnesses, wounds and injuries that are sustained and there is evident grave illness or grave bodily harm and it appears to the responsible surgeon undertaking the treatment or rather surgery that these grave injuries resulted from an act of crime, then the situation must be reported as allowed by the law.

It is also instrumental to know that there are other forms of injuries that patients and even the employees to some extent may sustain within the hospital settings which too need to be reported. Some of these are injuries that result to death or risk of death to the patient or the employees within the hospital, any blast within the hospital that may cause injuries, diving incidences that result to death or any form of decompression that leads to medical attention being administered, any dangerous substances leakages of substantial quantities, any major structural failures or any other mishap that can be considered to be of serious magnitude within the hospital (U.S. Department of Labor, 2014).

Ethics of prosecuting health care providers

There have been several controversial suits and indeed rulings that have been made against healthcare providers on actins that are widely seen to have been carried out in good faith and with good intentions. These are handling of situations and provision of information out of the pure heart that the physician had without any malicious intentions preempted yet they still ended up on the prosecution. Some of the most common accusations and eventual punishments have sprouted from the availing of information about the state of the patient in relation to the sickness to the authorities. Most of these are conducted out of a pure heart. For instance the gunshot wounds need to be reported so that investigations can be conducted to ensure the future safety of the patient once he walks out of the hospital hence it would be senseless to level accusations against the physician when his actions were intended t to secure the individual in the future. The other perspective is that the physicians often report cases that are deemed to be as a result of violence with the pure intention of appearing to be transparent, open and not accomplice to any crime that might have happened. If the surgeon helps a patient treat the sounds and the patient walks out of hospital, only for police to walk in an hour later in search of the patient, who might have been a criminal on the run, the surgeon could as well be easily accused of helping the criminal escape further from the law. If the surgeon reported to the nearest law enforcement he would still treat the criminal and help the law be applied thereafter, hence it would e absurd for the law to punish such acts of pure heart that healthcare providers do with good intentions on the guise of protecting the privacy of information on patients.