Legal Pitfalls of sonography

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Legal Pitfalls of Sonography
According to Farina and Amelia (80), physically molesting a patient is categorized as one of the severe malpractices within health care. One morning, everything was running as usual before a loud scream was heard from one of the wards. We quickly went to find out what had transpired. On arrival, the patient complained that the sonographer, my workmate, had tried to grab her arm forcedly even when she had insisted not to be touched. Furthermore, the patient claimed that the sonographer had tried to assault her sexually. When she refused, he threated to restrain her if she persisted. According to tort law, the sonographer had committed an assault and battery.
Another incident was when a sonographer decided to share the medical information and diagnosis of one of the patients with, the patients relative who allegedly was also the sonographer’s close friend. They started to discuss the diagnosis report, and the sonographer commented that the patient had HIV/AIDs and had been infected by his husband. It was not until one of the sonographers accidentally saw the chats between the colleague and her friend that the incident was noted and stopped. In this case, the sonographer breached the tort law that required him to uphold confidentiality and avoid invasion of privacy of the patient.
There was also another case where a sonographer administers wrong medication to the patient. He had collected many diagnosis reports from the desk and went around administering medicine as per what was indicated by the physician.

After attending to a couple of patients, he proceeds to another patient and without careful going through the patient details, he instructed the patient to take the medicine he had carried. The sonographer had assumed that same patient was the one he had attended to in the morning. However, during the day, the patient formerly in the room was moved to another room, and a new one brought in. In this scenario, the sonographer is liable for an unintentional tort known as negligence. He fails to reasonable and carefully administer care to the patient.
The legal aspects of sonography outline the rights of the health professionals and that of the patients and brings about professional accountability and encourages physicians to continually provide adequate and best care to the patients (Farina and Amelia 82). The management should create awareness and advice the sonographers to avoid the culture of violence and reporting cases that involve any violent act towards the patients. As for the second case, the sonographers handling medical information of patient should continuously be monitored. Furthermore, the institution should create a culture of preserving patient’s information between them and their clients and administer strict punishment to any act that might have resulted to breach of patient confidential information. Finally, the management should have at least two sonographers at a time attending to patients instead of one. This is to ensure that the medical reports used to administered drugs to the patient are the correct ones.
Work Cited
Farina, Roberto, and Amelia Sparano. “Errors in sonography.” Errors in Radiology. Springer, Milano, 2012. 79-85.