Obedience in a natural setting
Aim:
-
To discover whether nurses would obey an
instruction which would involve breaking hospital regulations and endanger the
lives of patients
-
To whether nurses were aware of how obedient
they tended to be
Procedure:
-
Identical boxes of capsules were put in 22 wards
of 3 hospitals in the USA
-
Capsules were placebos which contained glucose
-
The containers were labelled informing of the
maximum daily dose of 10mg
-
While the nurse was on duty she would receive a
telephone call from a Dr who told the nurse to give 20mg of the capsules to his
patient
-
He told the nurse that he was in a hurry and
that he would be there in ten minutes to sign the authorisation when he got
there
-
Rules the nurse would break included giving
above the maximum dosage of 10mg and only giving drugs after written
authorisation is obtained
-
Within half an hour of the nurse receiving the
instructions from the doctor she was debriefed by a researcher who was on hand
Results:
-
21 out of 22 nurses obeyed without hesitation
-
When questioned later 11 said that they had not
noticed the dosage warning
Conclusion:
-
Although the nurses believed they would not obey
a doctor unquestioningly if they were ordered to something that endangered
patients and breached regulations they did do just that
-
That nurses will knowingly break hospital rules
in a situation where a doctor tells them to, even if that means endangering a patient’s
life
No comments:
Post a Comment