Has Anyone Ever USED Their Malpractice Insurance?

But doesn't every hospital have coverage? Any facility can and will face a law suit, and to me, risk management has the best interests of the facility, but not necessarily the employee.

The day I received my newly earned license in the mail, I applied for malpractice insurance. I already knew the place I was working for. They are haphazard in EVERYTHING from communication on down and also, I knew I would be working for more places than just this one, so, it was probably to my advantage to do so.

I respect your reasoning, each person does what is best for themselves. But, I have seen many situations go south in an instant over the years, even as a CNA to trust anyone but myself.

That was a good one, and most certainly, when they want to pin the blame, they will find policies from their graves to screw someone. And most of the time, they don't know their own policies enough to even update them. Too scary for me.

I have seen city, county and state hospitals sued...look at the Kings County Incident where the patient died on the floor, on camera. They just settled for 2 million. Meanwhile, the nurses were still thrown under the bus. Now it is true that some of them lied and forged documents to cover their rear ends, but to be honest, there is still so much that we just don't know about the entire incident. Where was the nursing station located? What was the census? How many nursing staff members were there? What else was happening within the unit? They could have called their nursing supervisors, the AOD and even filled out protests of assignments that very morning, who knows? And, it could have been ignored. Maybe there were reasons to that could have preceded the death that the nurses could have had a legitimate complaint, had they not lied and forged. It is Risk Management's job to trendback events, and no facility wants to say that they don't have a flawless staff. But, I can't accept that an entire facility will totally support their employees to the bitter end. And, if they sue individual health care workers (and of course, ANYONE can do that), this is the point we are making.

So, I respectfully say that it is true that I don't work for your hospital and again, I respect your decision to decide not to take personal malpractice insurance. It is an individual choice, for sure. I just think that no one should put entire trust in anyone but themselves, no matter what choice they make.