I am doing a paper on a dilemma I encountered at work.
I am a home health LVN. I accompanied one of my pediatric patients' to the ER. He asked me if he was undergoing surgery that day. The mother took me aside and told me to lie so that he would not be anxious. She was very anxious herself. In the end, I felt the best thing to do was to keep quiet and let the ER RNs take the lead in informing the family of any plans for surgery.
Do you know of any books, articles or professional guidelines that specifically address this issue i.e. what to do when the legal guardian specifically asks the nurses to withhold information/lie to the minor? I have gathered a few, but putting in the right search terms is quite tricky.
Just say you don't know, and kid should ask the doctor. It isn't the RNs place to inform the patient of a course of treatment as yet undecided anyway, regardless of what the mother says.
This is tough and depends on the age of child. the mom might have known how the child would react and also if the child has anxiety or deficits in learning, developmental/learning disability. My child needed emergency blood work and no matter how much explanation or description we did, 5 of us still held him down after we told him he needed it. when he needed an MRI with sedation the tech said "come into my spaceship, to go in you need to put the mask on. it tastes like mint and you have take a deep breath (isoflourane) to go in the spaceship". Awesome. fell asleep and no harm done. no mention of needles even though they did put one in once asleep. Sometimes parents know what their child needs. And occasionally he will ask if he'll ever go back to the ship
Marvie
143 Posts
That is Omission and still wrong, Never lie to any patient no matter what and never purposly withold info.