NU 451 negligence and malpractice ventilator plan
As nurse-manager of a skilled nursing facility newly accepting ventilator patients, set out a staff education and response plan, describe one element of malpractice and the part of your plan that addresses it, and explain how you would determine the standard of care.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 13, 2026
A plan, then one element, then the standard
The three prompts build on each other, and the middle one is where posts usually go wrong. Malpractice has four elements — a duty owed, a breach of that duty, causation, and damages — and the prompt asks you to describe one of them and then point to the specific part of your plan that addresses it. That is a matching exercise, not a definition exercise. If you choose breach of duty, the plan element that answers it is competency validation, because a documented competency record is the evidence that the standard was met. If you choose causation, the answer is more likely to be the rapid response and escalation pathway, because causation turns on whether the delay produced the harm. Naming the element without pointing at the plan leaves the second half of the prompt unanswered, and it is the half that shows you understand what the element actually requires.
The education plan itself should read like something a nurse-manager could implement. A facility taking long-term ventilator patients for the first time needs initial didactic and hands-on training, competency validation before independent assignment, a defined skill mix on every shift, emergency response drills for the specific complications that occur — accidental disconnection, tube obstruction, cuff leak, ventilator failure — and a schedule for re-validation. The third prompt, determining the standard of care, has a definite answer: the standard is what a reasonably prudent nurse would do in similar circumstances, established through professional standards, facility policy, manufacturer guidance, state regulation and current evidence. Name those sources rather than treating the standard as a matter of judgement, and validate your claims with APA citations as the prompt requires. The peer-response prompt then asks whether your plan meets the facility's obligation to orient, educate and evaluate, so building those three words into the plan explicitly gives classmates something concrete to test.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01State the four elements of a malpractice claim and distinguish them from negligence generally.
- 02Design a competency-based education plan for a new clinical service.
- 03Match a specific element of malpractice to a concrete organisational control.
- 04Identify the sources from which a standard of care is established.
- 05Support management decisions with cited professional and regulatory standards.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS Discussion Questions (DQ) Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words. Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source. One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words. I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses. Weekly Participation Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately. In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies. Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work). Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week. APA Format and Writing Quality Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required). Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation. I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition. Use of Direct Quotes I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly. As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content. It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source. LopesWrite Policy For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me. Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes. Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own? Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score. Late Policy The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies. Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances. If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect. I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension. As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading. Communication Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me: Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class. Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01A plan to educate facility staff in ventilator care and complication response.
- 02A description of one element of malpractice.
- 03The specific part of the plan that addresses that element.
- 04An explanation of how the standard of care would be determined in this situation.
- 05Citations and references in APA format, plus responses to a minimum of two peers.
Education plan, malpractice element, standard of care
The education plan
Didactic and hands-on training, competency validation, skill mix and re-validation schedule.
Complication response
Drills for disconnection, obstruction, cuff leak and ventilator failure, with escalation.
One element of malpractice
Duty, breach, causation or damages, described in depth with its legal meaning.
The plan element that answers it
The specific control that would be the evidence in a claim.
Determining the standard of care
Professional standards, policy, manufacturer guidance, regulation and current evidence.
Regulation, professional standards, and evidence
Recommended databases
- American Nurses Association
- NCSBN
- AHRQ
- CINAHL
- Your state nurse practice act
- Facility policy
Search sequence
- 1.Read the ANA scope and standards for the professional standard a nurse-manager is held to.
- 2.Check NCSBN discipline material for how breaches of standard are actually adjudicated.
- 3.Read AHRQ long-term care safety resources for competency and escalation practices.
- 4.Search CINAHL for recent evidence on ventilator care competency in skilled nursing settings.
- 5.Locate your state's nurse practice act provisions on delegation and supervision.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Nursing Scope and Standards of Practice
American Nurses Association · 2021
The professional standard against which breach of duty is measured.
- 02
Discipline
National Council of State Boards of Nursing · 2025
How regulators establish that a standard was or was not met, which grounds the standard-of-care answer.
- 03
Long-Term Care Quality and Patient Safety Programs
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality · 2025
Safety practices specific to skilled nursing facilities, supporting the education plan.
- 04
2025 Code of Ethics for Nurses
American Nurses Association · 2025
The obligation to practise within competence, which underpins the competency-validation step.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Defining all four elements of malpractice instead of describing one, as asked.
- Describing an element without identifying the part of the plan that addresses it.
- Treating the standard of care as the manager's own judgement rather than an evidenced benchmark.
- Writing a training outline with no competency validation or re-validation step.
- Omitting the complication-response half, which the prompt asks about explicitly.
- Posting without citations in a prompt that requires validated opinions in APA format.
Submission checklist
- The education plan covers both initial competency and response to complications.
- Exactly one element of malpractice is described in depth.
- A named part of the plan is tied to that element.
- The standard of care is traced to identifiable sources.
- Claims carry APA citations and references.
- Responses to a minimum of two peers address the orient, educate and evaluate obligation.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.