The Rules of the Road
This is the single most important piece of legislation for nurses, defining their categories and educational requirements.
What is the Nurse Practice Act?
While negligence equates with general "carelessness," this term concerns professional actions or omissions.
What is Malpractice?
This is the transfer of responsibility for an activity, but specifically not the accountability.
What is Delegation?
This ethical principle is defined simply as the "duty to do good".
What is Beneficence?
If a nurse returns to a patient’s room exactly when they promised to do so, they are practicing this ethical principle.
What is Fidelity?
This entity is established by the state to develop and implement nursing rules and regulations.
What is the State Board of Nursing?
To prove malpractice, the harm or injury to the patient must be of this nature.
What is Physical?
$200: Unlike delegation, this involves the transfer of both the responsibility and the accountability for an activity.
What is Assignment?
When a nurse is caught between two competing ethical principles and cannot provide the best care, they experience this.
What is Moral Distress?
This term describes the situation where a nurse knows a patient is at high risk for a fall but fails to implement precautions, leading to an injury.
What is Foreseeability?
Under this agreement, an RN licensed in one state can practice in another, though the state where the patient resides regulates the practice.
What is the Nurse Licensure Compact?
This element of malpractice is based on the concept that certain events, like a fall, may reasonably be expected to cause specific results.
What is Foreseeability?
This type of liability holds an employer accountable for the negligence of their employees.
What is Vicarious Liability?
This principle refers to the nurse's obligation to be truthful.
What is Veracity?
A nurse manager who provides an honest, good-faith report of a former employee’s clinical incompetence to a new employer is protected by this legal concept.
What is Qualified Privilege?
This term refers to a patient's right to protection against unreasonable interference with their reputation or the right to be left alone.
What is Privacy?
These are allowable harms in a lawsuit, but only when they accompany a physical injury.
What are Pain and Suffering?
This principle explains why a hospital might be liable for temporary staff; patients "infer" that the agency staff work directly for the institution.
What is Apparent Agency?
These formal statements articulate the values and beliefs of the nursing profession to the public.
What are Professional Codes of Ethics?
This specific phenomenon explains why a hospital can be held liable for the actions of a contracted agency nurse, as patients assume the nurse is a hospital employee.
What is Apparent Agency?
This specific right ensures the protection and secrecy of the medical record.
What is Confidentiality?
This element requires that what the nurse did (or failed to do) must be the direct reason for the patient's harm.
What is Causation?
Managers use this "privilege" to warn potential employers about a staff member's incompetence in good faith.
What is Qualified Privilege?
This principle involves assisting a patient with decision-making, often in a "fatherly" manner.
What is Paternalism?
When a nurse is forced to provide care that is less than optimal due to limited resources or staff shortages, they are likely to experience this psychological state.
What is Moral Distress?