What is procedure for guardianship?

[Liebchen]

Do all hospitals have different procedures to file for guardianship, or is this a state wide kind of rule.

I am seeing another legal situation unfold and was wondering how that works.

Do nurses declare someone mentally incompetent? Do social workers? Can they, meaning nurses and social workers charge that someone is mentally making unwise choices and then get guardianship without a second opinion?

Do they have to have second opinions, like psychiatrist to deem someone mentally incompetent to make their own decisions?

What are the ranks you must go through in order for a hospital to file for a guardianship of somebody?

What are the legalities of filing for a guardianship within a hospital?

What, and when is it considered false imprisonment and what and when is it considered assault and battery?

I am so tired, but do any of these questions make sense. I will tell the story if need be, I just thought that might bore everybody.

[Liebchen]

All I can say is I hope I never get involved in a situation like this. It makes me really nervous. This is the second time within just a couple of quarters that issues like this have happened with one of the patients I am working with.

All this legal stuff is very scary. I know I read about it in my book, and we get the lectures, but it seems like some of this stuff is just lightly gone over and it gives a false sense that it is not reality, when in fact, it appears to happen more frequently then I care to admit.

Perhaps it is just the small town hospital that we are in and there is a lot more of the relaxed rules or I am not sure the term I am looking for, but things like this really disturb me. It has been good learning experience, but sometimes nurses do things out of the goodness of their heart , trying to do the best thing for the patient and it turns out to be the wrong thing. This is the part of nursing that really scares me.

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

All you can do is know the law and know your facility policies. Outside of that, as a staff nurse your hands are kind of tied as to how much you can actually do. You can sit with the patient to make sure they stay put. But most nurses will tell you they can't do that. You can assign another staff member to do that. Most nurses will tell you that isn't always feasible either. You can get a family member to stay with the patient. They are not reliable. I thought getting into supervision and management would help. However, it doesn't. In situations like these a team of people has to be working together. If one or two people on a team don't pull their weight then it is left to others of the team to fix the problem.

Don't dwell on this. I'm a firm believer that you can "think" situations into reality. I only saw real problems with it very rarely. They were more prominent in the large city hospital, but the hospital was used to it happening and knew exactly how to handle it. And, yes, we did have one or two situations where patients were placed in locked rooms for their own safety. However, they were well-documented as to why, we had doctors order to do it and the patients were checked every 15 minutes and this was documented.

[Liebchen]

Thank you for your advice. I appreciate all the time you took to explain things to me. I am with this patient again tomorrow, and I am dreading going.