Nursing Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 4

Nursing - Assignment Example ntage of SOAP is that there is documentation which ensures communication among different health professionals that may be involved in treatment of that patient. This will prevent any misdiagnosis which may be blamed on one health worker only and which may lead to that health worker being sued. In case of anything going wrong for the patient, all the health workers who were involved and integrated by the SOAP will be in trouble but that is rarely the case. The other legal advantage of a SOAP documentation system is that since the documentation is in note form, the progress notes and all other information appear on one page and hence no chances of ignoring part of the notes or not seeing all the notes as a result of missing pages as is common with other traditional documentation systems (Iyer, et al. 2006). This will ensure that non maleficence and beneficence are promoted as no information which may cause harm to the patient will be left without being addressed. This documentation system however has disadvantages too. One of the disadvantages is that every diagnosis is recorded in a different SOAP and this result to redundancy of the work. This may lead to some health workers failing to record all the information which legally amounts to neglect which may cause harm and also ignore the non maleficence code hence charges can be pressed for such a health worker. This is the commonly used documentation system where the patient’s care and treatment information is recorded chronologically over the duration the patient is in hospital or in a health facility (Iyer, et al. 2006). One of its main legal advantages is that it is useful in emergency situations to quickly collect information of patient’s health and treatment interventions necessary. In case anything fails to be recorded or is misreported at that time, the health worker has legal protection as it was an emergency which is allowed by law. Traditional narrative is the system that most health workers are