following your hospital policies and procedures will not always avoid negligence

[ageless]

LegalPad From the 8/05 issue of Update for Nurses

Negligence occurs when a nurse fails to follow the "standard of care." Although nurses often use this term to describe their normal practice, this term has a very specific legal meaning.

The legal definition of "standard of care" is the basic level of care that is required of a reasonable and prudent nurse in similar situations. It is not the highest level of care, and it is not a regional or hospital specific standard.

The standard of care is a national standard. Therefore, your care will be compared to that of other nurses nationally. In other words, it is not OK to say "that's the way we've always done it." If national standards and guidelines exist, your care will be compared to them. So, even following your hospital policies and procedures will not avoid negligence, because they may be deemed as below the national standard of

care as well.

The best way to maintain a practice that meets the standard of care is to keep up to date using national resources and to become involved in hospital policy reviews to assure that you are practicing at a level that meets current standards.

[elkpark]

I worked as a state and Federal surveyor for my state for the last few years, and part of our survey process (and, often, complaint investigations) involved reviewing the hospital's policies and procedures. You'd be amazed at how often I had to point out to nursing administration people that the hospital's policies were not up to the current standards of care -- typically, because the policy hadn't been updated in several years, or through simple oversight, or because the people who wrote the policies did their best, but didn't have a lot of experience in the particular specialty to really understand what's considered the standard of care (I surveyed mostly inpatient psych, which is my background, and we visited a lot of small, rural hospitals which had opened psych units and were legitmately trying to do a good job, but didn't have any experienced psych nurses on staff. Kinda scary ...)

[ageless]

That is exactly why I posted this article. So often we simply look up the policy and believe that will cover our actions or we advise posters on this board to consult the policy & procedure manual at their facility and think this will envelope them in a blanket of safety. Yep, I am mistaken!

[ceecel.dee, MSN, RN]

Great reminder!

I feel bad for relatively inexperienced nurses who are trying to master hospital policy and not realizing anything about national updates at all! There is so much to know!

[katwoman7755]

Very good advice.

Kathryn

[katwoman7755]

Great reminder!

I feel bad for relatively inexperienced nurses who are trying to master hospital policy and not realizing anything about national updates at all! There is so much to know!

Not just inexperienced nurses..but also experienced nurses, who continue to go about "the way it was always done." I think this is a good example of why nursing requires continuous learning....nursing education is simply just the beginning of what there is to learn.

Kathryn

Life long committed learner

[ceecel.dee, MSN, RN]

Not just inexperienced nurses..but also experienced nurses, who continue to go about "the way it was always done."

in utter agreement