Five Legal Issues in Nursing: What Every Nurse Should Know All nurses should be familiar with nursing

law and ethics and understand how nursing legal issues can affect them. Know your basic nursing laws and avoid lawsuits and liability: 1. Signatures Are Golden When a physician or other health care provider orders a procedure be done to a patient, it is the nurse's responsibility to obtain an informed consent signature. This means that the patient:

Understands the procedure and the alternative options Has had a chance to ask the provider any questions about the procedure Understands the risks and benefits of the procedure Chooses to sign or not sign to have the procedure performed.

If the nurse does not obtain signatures, both the nurse and the operating provider can be held liable for damages incurred. 2. Document, Document, Document It is the nurse's responsibility to make sure everything that is done in regards to a patient's care (vital signs, specimen collections, noting what the patient is seen doing in the room, medication administration, etc.), is documented in the chart. If it is not documented with the proper time and what was done, the nurse can be held liable for negative outcomes. A note of caution: if there was an error made on the chart, cross it out with one line (so it is still legible) and note the correction and the cause of the error. 3. Report It or Tort It Allegations of abuse are serious matters. It is the duty of the nurse to report to the proper authority when any allegations are made in regards to abuse (emotional, sexual, physical, and mental) towards a vulnerable population (children, elderly, or domestic). If no report is made, the nurse is liable for negligence or wrongdoing towards the victimized patient. 4. Rights to Privacy The nurse is responsible for keeping all patient records and personal information private and only accessible to the immediate care providers, according to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). If records get out or a patient's privacy is breached, the liability usually lies on the nurse because the nurse has immediate access to the chart. 5. You're Dosing WHAT?! Medication errors account for 7,000 deaths and 770,000 patients injured each year in the US. It is the nurse's responsibility to follow the five "rights" of medication administration: right dose, right drug, right route, right time, and right patient. If a nurse pays attention to those details, the likelihood of a medication error is greatly reduced, thereby saving the nurse and health care institution from liability for damages. While these are some of the main issues nurses might face legally, you should visit your state nursing board's Website for more information. Another good source for nursing legal issues is the American Nurses Association Website. It has a Code of Ethics guide that may be purchased online.

Negligence (Lat. negligentia, from neglegere, to neglect, literally "not to pick up something") is a failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in like circumstances.[1] The area of tort law known as negligence involves harm caused by carelessness, not intentional harm. According to Jay M. Feinman of the Rutgers University School of Law, "The core idea of negligence is that people should exercise reasonable care when they act by taking account of the potential harm that they might foreseeably cause to other people." [2] "those who go personally or bring property where they know that they or it may come into collision with the persons or property of others have by law a duty cast upon them to use reasonable care and skill to avoid such a collision." Fletcher v Rylands ([1866] LR 1 Ex 265) Through civil litigation, if an injured person proves that another person acted negligently to cause his injury, he can recover damages to compensate for his harm. Proving a case for negligence can potentially entitle the injured plaintiff to compensation for harm to their body, property, mental well-being, financial status, or intimate relationships. However, because negligence cases are very fact-specific, this general definition does not fully explain the concept of when the law will require one person to compensate another for losses caused by accidental injury. Further, the law of negligence at common law is only one aspect of the law of liability. Although resulting damages must be proven in order to recover compensation in a negligence action, the nature and extent of those damages are not the primary focus of negligence cases.

In law, malpractice is a type of negligence in, which the professional under a duty to act, fails to follow generally accepted professional standards, and that breach of duty is the proximate cause of injury to a plaintiff who suffers harm. It is committed by a professional or her/his subordinates or agents on behalf of a client or patient that causes damages to the client or patient.

A tort, in common law jurisdictions, is a civil wrong.[1] Tort law deals with situations where a person's behaviour has unfairly caused someone else to suffer loss or harm. A tort is not necessarily an illegal act but causes harm and therefore the law allows anyone who is harmed to recover their loss. Tort law is different to criminal law, which deals with situations where a person's actions cause harm to society in general. A claim in tort may be brought by anyone who has suffered loss. Criminal cases tend to be brought by the state, although private prosecutions are possible. Tort law is also differentiated from equity, in which a petitioner complains of a violation of some right. One who commits a tortious act is called atortfeasor. The equivalent of tort in civil law jurisdictions is delict. Tort may be defined as a personal injury; or as "a civil action other than a breach of contract."[2] A person who suffers a tortious injury is entitled to receive "damages", usually monetary compensation, from the person or people responsible or liable for those injuries. Tort law defines what is a legal injury and, therefore, whether a person may be held liable for an injury they have caused. Legal injuries are not limited to physical injuries. They may also include emotional, economic, or reputational injuries as well as violations of privacy, property, or constitutional rights. Tort cases therefore comprise such varied topics as auto accidents, false imprisonment, defamation, product liability (for defective consumer products), copyright infringement, and environmental pollution (toxic torts), among many others.

In much of the common law world, the most prominent tort liability is negligence. If the injured party can prove that the person believed to have caused the injury acted negligently that is, without taking reasonable care to avoid injuring others tort law will allow compensation. However, tort law also recognizes intentional torts, where a person has intentionally acted in a way that harms another, and "strict liability" or quasi-tort, which allows recovery under certain circumstances without the need to demonstrate negligence.