Mary is a 26 year old woman living at a residential mental health facility and is known to have entered the mental health services at the age of nineteen. Mary has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and poly drug abuse. She has been hospitalised many times but because of her drug addiction she has not spent any significant time to help her with her mental health condition. Her older sister who is also a drug user has always used Mary to prostitute as she is the more attractive one. This has made her very vulnerable to been sexually abused by men and has difficulty in saying “no “to having sex with men. Since living at the residential facility she is to be monitored and that at no point Mary is left alone with a male. Paul a residential support worker is under investigation because she has claimed that she has been raped by him. One evening you as a residential support worker are working with a student nurse only because of staff shortage. Mary comes and tells you that she has taken the wrong medication as she is self-medicating. The combination of this medication’s reaction to the one she had taken an hour earlier is severe. The options are for one of us to get her to hospital which could save her having brain damage or call an ambulance which the possibilities are that she could either die or suffer from brain damage because of the time. However if Mary is lying about taking this medication and us taking her to the hospital could leave other clients in danger as they will be left with a student nurse.
It is proposed that as a residential support worker and knowing Mary’s history do you take her to hospital or do you call an ambulance to get her there.