Scope of Practice & Duties
The legal obligation requiring an EMT to provide emergency care while on duty.
What is duty to act?
Type of consent legally assumed when a patient is unconscious or incapacitated.
What is implied consent?
Term for a civil wrong committed knowingly, such as assault, battery, or false imprisonment.
What is an intentional tort?
Federal law enacted to safeguard patient privacy and protect protected health information.
What is HIPAA?
Laws permitting parents to safely relinquish unharmed infants to designated places like fire or EMS stations.
What are safe-haven laws?
The specific actions and care that an EMT is legally allowed to perform defined by state law.
What is scope of practice?
Direct verbal or written agreement given by a patient to receive care
What is expressed consent?
The failure to provide the expected standard of care resulting in harm to the patient.
What is negligence?
Federal legislation guaranteeing emergency medical care to patients regardless of their ability to pay.
What is EMTALA (or COBRA/EMTALA)?
Two obvious physical findings that definitively indicate death in the field, allowing EMTs to withhold resuscitation.
What are decapitation, rigor mortis, decomposition, or dependent lividity?
The level of care expected from an EMT with similar training under similar circumstances.
What is standard of care?
Legal documents such as DNRs, living wills, or POLST forms that outline a patient's preferences for resuscitation and life-sustaining care.
What are advance directives?
Unlawfully touching a patient without getting their proper consent
What is battery?
The unauthorized detention or transport of a patient against their will without legal justification
What is false imprisonment?
Specific evidence-preservation guideline EMTs must enforce when treating a sexual assault victim.
What is instructing/ensuring the patient does not wash or change clothes?
Statutes designed to protect unpaid providers acting in good faith from civil liability, provided there is no gross negligence.
What are Good Samaritan laws?
The baseline mental condition a patient must demonstrate in order to legally refuse treatment or transport.
What is decision-making capacity (being lucid and rational)?
Legal doctrine meaning "the thing speaks for itself," applied when an injury could only have occurred due to negligence.
What is res ipsa loquitur?
False statements made verbally (slander) or in writing (libel) that harm a person's reputation.
What is defamation?
Primary physical guideline EMTs should follow to minimize evidence disturbance when entering and exiting a crime scene.
What is using a single path of entry and exit (one way in/out)?
Legal principle that shields government employees and agencies from certain types of lawsuits.
What is sovereign immunity?
The appropriate actions an EMT must take when facing doubts or conflicts regarding an advance directive on scene.
What are starting treatment and contacting medical direction?
The four distinct elements required in court to successfully prove negligence against an EMT
What are duty to act, breach of duty, harm/damage, and proximate cause?
Critical patient condition requirement under EMTALA that must be met before an inter-facility transfer can occur.
What is stabilizing the patient?
Three specific scenarios where EMTs are legally required to file a mandatory report with authorities.
What are abuse, crimes, dog bites, drug-related injuries, infectious disease exposures, or mental incapacity?