Legal issues: Nursing

Nurse Abe works in the emergency department and has noticed that one of the other nurses, Nurse Brynn, hasn't been scanning the medication and client wristband barcodes prior to administering medications. Nurse Abe knows barcode scanning is a way to help prevent medication errors and so he questions Nurse Brynn who states, “I know the hospital policy says we’re supposed to scan medication barcodes, but I keep forgetting to do it. Don’t worry Abe, I still check the medications so I know they’re safe to give.” What Nurse Abe has witnessed is a potential nursing legal issue.

As a nurse, you are legally responsible for your actions when caring for clients. It is important to understand the legal issues that nurses can face in order to avoid potential consequences like disciplinary action by your employer, loss of credentials or certification, loss of your nursing license, and even criminal charges or jail time.

To recognize legal issues in nursing, it is important to appreciate how legal terms, like liability and tort, guide professional nursing practice. Liability means that someone is responsible for some wrongdoing according to the law. Another important term is tort, which is a wrongful act or omission against another person or their property that causes injury or harm. Torts are the most common source of legal liability for nurses. So if one of Nurse Brynn’s clients experiences harm from a medication error, Nurse Brynn could be held liable in a court of law for the tort of failure to use the medication scanning system.

Alright, torts can be classified as intentional or unintentional. Intentional torts are deliberate acts against a person or their property that cause harm, such as battery or assault. Battery is when a person physically harms another person, like a slap or kick, and assault is when a person threatens to hurt another person causing fear.

An intentional tort can also occur if there is a lack of informed consent for procedures. Nurses often act as a witness when a healthcare provider obtains informed consent for a client procedure, like surgery. When a nurse signs for informed consent, they are vouching that the client was mentally capable of giving voluntary consent. Failure to obtain consent for invasive procedures, other than in emergencies, can result in a claim of battery since the clinician purposely denies the client the right to decide what is done to their body.

On the other hand, unintentional torts are acts that inadvertently cause a person or their property harm and are the most common type of tort in nursing. Typical causes of unintentional torts are negligence and malpractice. So negligence occurs when there is an unintended breach of duty that caused harm to another person, even if the person causing harm did not mean to. One specific type of negligence is malpractice, which occurs when a healthcare professional fails to uphold standards of care. For nurses, standards of care come from the individual states’ Nurse Practice Acts, the healthcare facility policies and procedures, and professional nursing organizations.

In Nurse Brynn’s case, if she harms a client by administering the incorrect medication, she would be liable for malpractice because she’s a professional who failed to follow the facility’s standard of care by not scanning the designated barcodes.