It seems that about 2/3rds of the posts on here mention either being sued or losing your license...it doesn't seem to matter what the topic is someone makes a comment about losing your license or being sued.
I am curious as to whether this is a valid fear or whether this is part of fear-based nursing culture.
1. How many years have you been a nurse?
2. How many nurses do you know personally that have been sued?
3. How many of those nurses who were sued have had to testify in court?
4. How many of those who testified were found guilty?
5. How many nurses do you know personally who have lost their license for patient related (non-criminal) actions? (By non - criminal I mean not for cases of drug diverting or robbing a back or something where the nurse knows what they are doing is illegal and will result in losing their license)
Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
I think the funny thing my hospital ever did was start allowing RNs to note and post their own orders. About 5 yrs
ago 2 people had to check ea. order-1 needed to be a RN. Once this was allowed there is always 1 order ea night that
is not correct. Oh well. Kinda off the subject. But tonight I had a covering doctor @ the NH where I work PD call the police
on me ( well as he was screaming @ me on the phone he changed his mind and said he called the cops on the NH for not
answering the phone) END RESULT-they came. My end result I'm drinking
Hopefully not at work! lol
For real now...:eek:Are you kidding me? Where was the supervisor? This jerk should be disiplined! What does your manager say! report him to coporate compliance for assault/bullying behavior. IT IS UNBELIEVEABLE that this stuff still goes on everyday in the hospital and in some cases these jerks are allowed to continue to behave this way:mad:.......when will laws be passed to stop jerks like this.....when will their peers shun them, hold them accountable, and disipline these jerks:twocents:
Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
Hopefully not at work! lol
For real now...:eek:Are you kidding me? Where was the supervisor? This jerk should be disiplined! What does your manager say! report him to coporate compliance for assault/bullying behavior. IT IS UNBELIEVEABLE that this stuff still goes on everyday in the hospital and in some cases these jerks are allowed to continue to behave this way:mad:.......when will laws be passed to stop jerks like this.....when will their peers shun them, hold them accountable, and disipline these jerks:twocents:
Personally....I'd report him to the board of medicine and the state ama:yeah:
"to document with the thought in mind at all times that a lawyer could be reviewing it. "
I have always had a CYB or CYA mentality. Also, I wanted to make sure 1, 5, 10+ years from now that I would know what the heck I did if I read my own notes.
Nurse 15 yrs, deposed once for a complaint against me. Know of several nurses (more than 10) that have been brought to the attention of the nursing board courtsy of my hospital. Some for deversion, some for questionable care. Varying results.
I'm a GN and actually just had a required legal education class this morning. The way it sounds is that unless you do something on purpose (such as giving a wrong med on purpose), your employer will support you and they will be the ones sued if it goes to court. If they fire you first for making a huge mistake then you are pretty much on your own. Other things I learned today- the top areas that are sued are OR, OB, and ER (where I'm at!). Doctors are sued more often than nurses. Nurses rarely lose their license and almost NEVER have to pay for lawsuits. Also, they said that if you don't own up to a mistake if you realize that you make it than you are a LOT worse off than if you own up to it. I was also told never to carry your own legal insurance- because then lawyers WILL come after you and not the hospital. A big reason for being sued these days= poor documentation! Hope this helps somewhat!
Been a nurse for 26 years. Never known another nurse to be sued. Never known a nurse to lose license over anything except drug related (theft/abuse) issues.
My friends who are nurses do not carry malpractice insurance, saying that it draws attention to a nurse's assets, whereas, most nurses don't make enough to make suing worthwhile. That's their opinion. I still carry my malpractice insurance, though.
I'm a GN and actually just had a required legal education class this morning. The way it sounds is that unless you do something on purpose (such as giving a wrong med on purpose), your employer will support you and they will be the ones sued if it goes to court. If they fire you first for making a huge mistake then you are pretty much on your own. Other things I learned today- the top areas that are sued are OR, OB, and ER (where I'm at!). Doctors are sued more often than nurses. Nurses rarely lose their license and almost NEVER have to pay for lawsuits. Also, they said that if you don't own up to a mistake if you realize that you make it than you are a LOT worse off than if you own up to it. I was also told never to carry your own legal insurance- because then lawyers WILL come after you and not the hospital. A big reason for being sued these days= poor documentation! Hope this helps somewhat!
Here's real world: if you're even remotely involved in anything that resembles something wrong, or if you're named as a guilty party whether you actually are or not, the hospital will cover its own behind and care less about yours. If you're the sole person named in the suit (and it happens), BELIEVE ME - the hospital WILL NOT CARE.
Lawyers don't give a rat's behind about whether you have insurance or not and they know darn well it's not drawing attention to your assets. Having insurance doesn't get you sued. You're employed, you draw a paycheck, and therefore you have enough assets to be sued.
Where people are getting the idea that insurance draws lawsuits I have no idea. I have a friend who's a prominent attorney with Novartis pharmaceuticals (and several friends who are JAG officers) and they've all told me time and time again this is completely flawed logic - not that I ever bought into it in the first place.
Insurance might even STOP you from being sued - because a lot of times lawyers don't want to deal with the hassle that comes with suing a company over an individual (when you're sued like this and you have appropriate insurance, your company steps in to defend you). An insurance company does NOT want to pay, and they will go to great lengths to insure they don't have to pay.
Lawyers know this and are more likely to back away from the expensive and drawn-out case that may result - because if a lawyer doesn't win, they don't get paid!
A lawyer is actually MORE LIKELY to go after you if you DON'T have malpractice insurance; you become a sitting duck with unprotected assets - LIKE A HOUSE - that you could lose in a lawsuit if YOU lose and are forced to pay up. The court CAN seize your property and force it to sell at auction - happens every day. It's the reason I carry a one million dollar personal liability policy with my homeowner's insurance; they can sue my insurance company, but I'll still have my house. And it's why I carry double the limits of liability on my car insurance - I pay about ten bucks a month more for it, and if I get sued, I'll still have my house because they'll sue my insurance company, who will work like he*l to make sure they don't have to pay out.
At the end of the day, if I lose, and my insurance company hands Joe Citizen a check for $300K - my limits of liability on my car insurance (or maybe even less - $10K, $25K, guaranteed and tax free, depending on the settlement) - they'll usually walk away quietly. Very quietly, most of the time. Without that buffer, they'll go after something bigger - like my house - and you can look up what I owe on that and find out the huge amount of equity I have in it - it's public record - and then I'm in serious trouble and living in a box somewhere.
Liability insurance and malpractice insurance don't draw attention to your assets, and lawyers know RNs don't make squat. But RNs do have nice assets - pensions (yes, they can sue in some states for that), houses, even cars. What the insurance says is go ahead, if you dare - because you're going to get a run for your money from lawyers that I don't have to have on retainer - I've already paid for them in my premium.
When you buy insurance, you've hired the company. And they don't EVER want to pay anyone anything. It's the one time that quality of an insurance company works for you rather than against you. It'll be THEIR lawyers the other guy will be battling with. And I say, let them have at it.
Anyone who walks into a courtroom without insurance may as well walk into a war zone without a flak vest. Liability/malpractice insurance is STUPID CHEAP. I can't imagine why someone wouldn't carry it.
A hospital is a corporation - do not make the mistake of thinking otherwise - and it could care less what happens to you, no matter how great a nurse you are or how much your boss loves you or how amazing your last personnel evaluation was or that your patients are convinced you walk on water. And in this economy, there are ten more just like you panting outside the gate just waiting to get hired. They'll dump you and hire another one just like you. They'll also tell you a bunch of corporate mumbo-jumbo crap to make you disposable. Never mind the nonprofit tax status - they're a business, plain and simple, out for the bottom line. Trust me on it.
When most insurance of this nature runs about ten to twenty dollars a month, WHY would someone not have it?? I don't understand the thought process. Truly.
OH - and while I realize it's only one example and an isolated case, I've already seen one instance where the ONLY people named in the lawsuit were the two RN's involved.
Know why?
The lawyer for one of the RNs (who was NOT affiliated with the hospital - as I said, the hospital took a stand-off approach with this and were nowhere to be found in the midst of the chaos - in fact, the facility's lawyer CONTACTED the RN's lawyer, not the RN!) told her it was because most RNs in our area didn't carry insurance, and the docs were of course insured for millions. The complainant knew they'd never win against the docs' insurance company, so they specifically named the RNs.
Surprise surprise - guess who had insurance? Both RNs.
Having been on the receiving end of a lawsuit myself, I can say that having malpractice insurance is nothing to be lackadaisical or misinformed about. As I have posted before, the first words out of the attorney's mouths, (who represented the named nurses as well as the employer), were, "Do you have malpractice insurance?" This was before they informed the nurses that at any time they could cease representing us. They stopped representing me and it took quite some time to find out what had happened since the employer stopped having anything to do with me as the lawsuit progressed. It was nice to have malpractice insurance when I needed it.
Specializes in Medsurg/ICU, Mental Health, Home Health.
I'm a GN and actually just had a required legal education class this morning. The way it sounds is that unless you do something on purpose (such as giving a wrong med on purpose), your employer will support you and they will be the ones sued if it goes to court. If they fire you first for making a huge mistake then you are pretty much on your own. Other things I learned today- the top areas that are sued are OR, OB, and ER (where I'm at!). Doctors are sued more often than nurses. Nurses rarely lose their license and almost NEVER have to pay for lawsuits. Also, they said that if you don't own up to a mistake if you realize that you make it than you are a LOT worse off than if you own up to it. I was also told never to carry your own legal insurance- because then lawyers WILL come after you and not the hospital. A big reason for being sued these days= poor documentation! Hope this helps somewhat!
I want to know where you work, because this sounds like the place I worked when I was fresh out of school! They gave me the same rigamarole.
And even if you don't "lose" the suit, you still have to pay legal fees, get time off from work...that sort of thing.
"I have known several nurses who got fired for drug diversion, none of them lost their licenses, one refused to go to rehab and still didn't lose her license, only a slap on the wrist, license is on probation but she is able to work unemcumbered. "
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Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN
20,908 Posts
For real now...:eek:Are you kidding me? Where was the supervisor? This jerk should be disiplined! What does your manager say! report him to coporate compliance for assault/bullying behavior. IT IS UNBELIEVEABLE that this stuff still goes on everyday in the hospital and in some cases these jerks are allowed to continue to behave this way:mad:.......when will laws be passed to stop jerks like this.....when will their peers shun them, hold them accountable, and disipline these jerks:twocents: