Legal Issues in community health nursing

Prepared by Suhail Al Humoud

Legal Issues in
community health
nursing
 Legal Issues in community health nursing :
Objectives

Prepared by Suhail Al Humoud

After completion the lecture the students enable to:

 Legal Issues in community health nursing

In a civilized society, a system of laws promotes

order, protects the rights of citizens and provides
the framework for a wide variety of relationships.
Laws help establish order within a society for the
common good of all. In today’s complex world,
with advancing technologies and array of societal
problems, legal issues are an important aspect of
life. For nurses in practice within the current
health system, knowledge of basic legal concepts is
vital. (Deloughery, 1998).
 Legal Issues in community health nursing

Nurses have been legally accountable for their actions for

many years, and current trends regarding the legal
ramifications of nursing practice compel nurses to learn the
legal aspects of their field. Many nurses are functioning in
more autonomous roles in which liability exposure increases
in proportion to their level of independence. In addition to
that the increasing demands in healthcare for quality in
patient care services and increasing patient awareness of
health care issues directly increase the number of
complaints and litigation. So nurses must be aware of legal
implications of nursing practice because present day
society is litigious, and an increasing number of nurses have
been named as defendants in malpractice lawsuits.
(Deloughery, 1998, and Elnitsky, Nichols, and Palmer, 1999,
and Showers, 1999).
 Legal Issues in community health nursing

Definition of negligence and malpractice

Negligence: “the omission to do something that a reasonable
person, guided by those ordinary considerations, which
ordinarily regulate human affairs, would to do, or doing
something, which a reasonable and prudent person would not
to do”
Or
“failure to exercise the degree of care that a reasonable nurse
would exercise under the same or similar circumstances”
 Legal Issues in community health nursing

Malpractice
“that part of law of negligence applied to the professional
person: It is, in effect, any professional misconduct or
unreasonable lack of professional skill”. A nurse could be guilty
if she or he injured a client while performing a procedure
differently from the way other nurses would have done it.
Negligence applies to any person who, for example, drove a
car too quickly in snowy weather and injured a pedestrian.
 Legal Issues in community health nursing

Types of malpractice situation:

Medication errors
Falls
Failure to observe and take appropriate action
Burns
Mistaken identity
Sponge counts
 Legal Issues in community health nursing

Elements of Malpractice:
there are essentially four elements that must be presented in a
successful malpractice suit; all of these factors must be proven
before the court will find liability against the nurse and/or
institution. This includes the following:
(1)The nurse’s had a duty to provide care to the patient and to
follow an acceptable standard of care.
(2)The nurse’s failure to adhere to standard of care.
(3)The nurse’s failure to adhere to standard of care caused the
patient’s injuries.
(4)The plaintiff suffered damages as a result of the nurse’s
negligent actions.
 Legal Issues in community health nursing

Elements of Malpractice:

Elements Example
Duty owed the Failure to monitor a patient’s
patient response to treatment
Nature of the
duty Failure to communicate change in
Existence of the status
duty to the primary health care
Breach of the duty provider
owed
Failure to ensure minimum
Foreseeability standards are met
Failure to provide patient
Causation education
Injury Patient falls
 Legal Issues in community health nursing

Nurses should be take the following steps to safeguard

themselves against a professional negligence action:
•Keep Current with your job requirements, including any
policies that ascribes additional responsibilities to your
position.
•Hold regular staff meeting with mandatory attendance.
•Encourage the free flow of communication among staff.
•View incidents without implication or blame emphasize
the opportunity to improve the patient care process.
•Ensure that routinely needed reference materials, such
as hospital policies, procedures, guidelines and reference
books, are readily accessible for all nurses.
 Legal Issues in community health nursing

•Maintain a system to give all nurses the opportunity to

review amended policies as they are revised.
•Encourage continuing education and probe nurses for
insight into improving patient care.
•Stress communication about a patient’s status and
ensure that staff adheres to documentation guidelines.
•Have a system for filing and tracking patient care
incidents to identify areas where the staff needs
education.
•Properly train staff to use new patient care quipment
•Advice staff when the hospital creates, revises, or
retires policies or implements a new method of
providing patient care.