Should I Carry Malpractice (Liability) Insurance?

To me, it's not a matter of what area of nursing you work in -- it's a matter of whether you trust your employer to protect your interests (beyond protecting their own) if the doo-doo hits the fan. I do not. I worked as a hospital surveyor for my state and the Feds for several years, and saw, firsthand, in the course of investigating complaints against hospitals and suspicious deaths/injuries, many employers throw individual RNs under the bus in order to protect the facility -- this is what their attorneys (the ones who would also be advising you if you depend on your employer) tell them to do -- when it was often quite obvious, from reviewing the records and interviewing the parties involved, that the only thing the RN had done wrong was have the bad luck to be assigned to that particular client on that particular day ... The hospitals would single out one or more RNs they could "blame" for the incident, and then promptly fire them to show their good faith ("golly, we had no idea we had such a dangerous and incompetent nurse on our staff! We fired her as soon as we figured it out. 'cause we're doing everything we can to run a first-class operation here!") Guess what -- once Nurse X has been blamed and fired, she's no longer covered by the employer's insurance -- she's dangling in the wind by herself. If she doesn't already have her own coverage and the situation ends up with her needing legal representation, she'll have to pay the attorney out of pocket, because there is no way to get coverage after the fact for an incident that has already happened. And, if you ever find yourself in that situation, the first hour with an attorney will cost you a lot more than the annual insurance premium for the vast majority of RNs ...

My father was an MD and cautioned me while I was still in nursing school to never depend on an employer to protect me, and to never practice without my own, personal coverage. Everything I've seen in 25 years of practice since then has just reinforced to me what good advice that was.

Beyond what sirI has already discussed, personal liability coverage will also provide legal representation if you ever have to defend your license before the BON (which your employer probably would not), and provides coverage if you want to work as a volunteer somewhere (your church, local homeless shelter, disaster relief, etc.) -- which your employer's coverage definitely will not; you're only covered by your employer during the actual time you are working for them at their facility.

I'm another of those nurses that would never consider working a single day without my own coverage. I can't believe, after all these years, that there is still any discussion or controversy about the topic.