Sources of Law
Derived from federal and state constitutions.
What is constitutional law?
This act prohibits the transfer of patients from private to public hospitals without the appropriate screening and stabilization. It was intended to prevent patient dumping.
What is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA)?
These acts are state laws intended to protect citizens, make nurses accountable, and ensure that care is consistent with best practices within the scope and standards of nursing. Creation of a state board of nursing, sometimes called the nursing commission, is part of a state nurse practice act.
What are nurse practice acts?
Required to ensure patient safety and satisfaction with care and are determined in different ways, such as the acuity of a patient or group of patients.
What are nurse-to-patient ratios?
This is the publication of false statements that result in damage to a person’s reputation.
What is defamation of character?
Protect the rights of individuals and provide for fair and equitable treatment when civil wrongs or violations occur.
What is civil laws?
Also know by the ACA, this act was characterized by 4 themes: (1) consumer rights and protections, (2) affordable health care coverage, (3) increased access to care, and (4) quality of care the meets the needs of patients.
What is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)?
These laws encourage health care professionals to assist in emergencies. These laws limit liability and offer legal immunity if a nurse helps at the scene of an accident.
What are Good Samaritan Laws?
A practice in which nurses temporarily work in another area because there are not enough nurses to care for the number of patients and the acuity of the patients’ needs on that unit at that time.
What is floating?
This occurs when one speaks falsely about another and this the written defamation of character.
What is slander and libel?
What is nurse practice acts?
What is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)?
In this court case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that there is a fundamental right to privacy, which includes a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy. The court ruled that during the first trimester a woman could end her pregnancy without state regulation because the risk of natural mortality from abortion is less than with normal childbirth.
What is Roe v Wade?
This occurs when a nurse refuses to provide care for a patient after having established a patient-nurse relationship.
What is patient abandonment?
This describes conduct that falls below the generally accepted standard of care of a reasonably prudent person. Nurses are this when they had a duty of care that is breached and their patient is physically harmed.
What is negligence?
Also known as regulatory law, this more clearly defines expectations of civil and criminal laws.
What is administrative law?
This act prohibits discrimination and ensures equal opportunities for people with disabilities in employment, state and local government services, public accommodations, commercial facilities, and transportation. It is enforced by the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity.
What is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)?
This act was the first statute that legislatively defined “death with dignity,” sometimes called physician-assisted suicide. The statute stated that competent individuals with a terminal disease could make an oral and written request for medication to end their life in a humane and dignified manner.
What is the Oregon Death with Dignity Act?
This occurs when an RN educates, observes, and verifies that a nonregistered nurse (e.g., LPN, nurse assistant, or assistive personnel) can do a specific task that is usually completed by an RN.
What is nurse delegation?
Certain criteria are necessary to establish this: (1) the nurse (defendant) owed a duty of care to the patient (plaintiff), (2) the nurse did not carry out or breached that duty, (3) the patient was injured as a result of the breach in duty, and (4) damages or remedies are allowed under state law to “make the person whole” in the eyes of the court.
What is malpractice?
Describes decisions made in legal cases that were resolved in courts. A report of the issue, facts, findings, and subsequent decision that was made to resolve the issue can be found after a case is presented to a judge and jury.
What is case law?
This act requires health care institutions to provide written information to patients concerning their rights to make decisions about their care, including the right to refuse treatment and to formulate an advance directive. A patient’s record must indicate whether a patient has signed an advance directive and include a copy of the directive if it is available. Patients must also be offered information about advance directives.
What is the Patient Self-Determination Act (PSDA)?
This act states that health care providers can use either the cardiopulmonary or the whole-brain definition to determine death.
What is the Uniform Determination of Death Act?
These people are liable if their actions exceed their scope of practice and cause harm to patients and are expected to know what they can and cannot do when providing care to patients.
What are nursing students?
This is an intentional threat toward another person that places the person in reasonable fear of harmful, imminent, or unwelcome contact, but this is any intentional offensive touching without consent or lawful justification.
What is assault and battery?