Legal Terms
Look for these during patient assessment as they provide information on any medical conditions the patient may have, including allergies, asthma, diabetes, or epilepsy.
Medical Identification Tag
These laws exist to protect an off-duty EMT from liability when he or she provides care to patients out of ethical responsibility.
What is Good Samaritan Laws?
When a patient is unconscious and unable to speak for himself, then Paramedics can treat the patient under this doctrine.
What is the doctrine of implied consent?
The acronym for this document/advanced directive is MOLST.
What are Medical Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment
An adult who lacks the physical or mental capacity to provide for his or her daily needs
What is a vulnerable adult?
Defines what an EMT with the appropriate licensure can and cannot do by law. It is illegal to perform operations outside your scope of practice.
Scope of Practice
A tort that is committed knowingly. Examples include abandonment, assault, battery, false imprisonment, and defamation.
What is an intentional tort?
When a law enforcement officer (LEO) places a person in custody, that person no longer has the freedom of movement. This type of consent applies then.
Involuntary Consent
The type of advanced directive directing comprehensive efforts to prevent arrest but not intubation, then DNR.
What is a MOLST Option A (DNI/MOLST A2)
Tool/procedure allowed under Tactical EMS protocol for limiting blood loss, pain, and risk of secondary contamination/injury to a minor open wound (not tourniquet)
What is cyanoacrylate tissue adhesive
Defined as the level of care at which the average, prudent provider in a given community would practice.
What is Standard of Care?
The federal law that protects the confidentiality of patient health care information.
What is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)?
In some special circumstances patients who are below the age of majority are permitted to give informed consent, provided they are capable of understanding the consequences of their decisions and that they are not impaired by alcohol or drugs
What are emancipated minors?
Some patients refuse care in opposition to all logic when confronted with a clear and immediate danger to their health. These patients are deciding to do this.
What is go Against Medical Advice (AMA)?
A minor patient is defined as a patient who has not reached their 18th birthday and is not
(1) Married, OR
(2) this.
Occurs when all four of the following conditions are met
What is negligence?
The keeping and transporting the patient without consent.
What is False Imprisonment?
Paramedics may encounter a patient experiencing a behavioral emergency, abnormal or bizarre behavior that may include violence or threats of violence. Paramedics, unsure of the cause of the behavior (e.g., drug intoxication,toxicological emergency, or psychiatric emergency), may need to institute this procedure.
The type of advanced directive directing limited palliative care only before arrest, then DNR.
What is a MOLST B
The State EMS Medical Director
Who is Richard L. Alcorta
The law that prevents hospital discrimination of emergency patients based on the ability or inability to pay, requiring them to see patients who come into the ER.
What is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act?
When an EMT begins treating a patient, but stops without transferring the care to someone with appropriate expertise.
What is abandonment?
Sometimes during a restraint a patient will become so agitated and combative that he will enter a state of excited delirium. When in excited delirium the patient will be tachycardic, hypertensive, and have hyperpyrexia. In some instances, the condition is worsened by the presence of sympathomimetic drugs such as methamphetamine or cocaine. Patients in a state of excited delirium who have been restrained and then placed face down rapidly tire from the restricted breathing.
What is positional asphyxia?
The Maryland law that describes procedures for advanced directives, including written instructions in MOLSTS and DNRs.
What is the Maryland Healthcare Decisions Act?
The name of the program at the back of the 2018 MD EMS Protocols for a new pilot program allowing transport to non-hospital urgent care facilities (ie Holy Cross Hospital Express Care)
What is the Alternative Destination Program?