Nursing Insurance??

NSO (http://www.nso.com) and Marsh (http://www.proliability.com) are two companies that get mentioned on this board a lot -- seems most people (who choose to carry insurance) have coverage through one or the other. Some people here have also commented that they get a rider on their homeowner's insurance.

There are several older threads here about the pro and con viewpoints on individual Liability Insurance -- I'm sure they would be easy to find with the "search" button in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

I am one of those nurses who has never practiced a single day of my career without my own coverage; my father is an MD (retired now), and he told me back when I was in nursing school to never even consider practicing without my own, individual coverage -- and everything I've seen since then in the nearly 25 years I've been an RN has just reinforced to me what good advice that was!

If you believe that your employer will protect you if/when the doo-doo hits the fan, I have some swamp land in FL I'd like to sell you! :) I have seen first-hand, many times, how the first thing that happens when something goes seriously sideways in a hospital is that the hospital's attorneys start looking for a nurse or nurses they can blame the situation on in order to reduce the hospital's liability. If that happens, the nurse who gets blamed is left to dangle in the wind -- you are no longer covered under the hospital's insurance, and, if you don't already have your own coverage, there is no insurance company on the planet that will sell you coverage for an event that has already happened -- so you are entirely on your own.

However, it is also true that the chances of a nurse getting sued for malpractice are very slim. On the other hand, most nursing liability policies include coverage for legal representation in the event that you are called as a witness in a case against someone else (oh, say, a physician -- they get sued fairly often, and nurses often get deposed or called as witnesses), or have to go before the BON to defend your license for any reason. Either of those situations is much more likely to occur, over the course of your career, than getting sued yourself, and, in either case, you would definitely want to have legal representation -- and just the first hour of consulting with an attorney would (in most cases) cost you more out of pocket than the annual premium for liability insurance.

However, as you note, there are lots of nurses who feel differently about this topic, and it's something each nurse decides for her/himself.

If you work for a hospital they will cover you.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but this statement simply is not true. If you've not (yet) found yourself in a situation where you found that out the hard way, you've been lucky so far, but that could change tomorrow.

I worked for my state for several years as a hospital surveyor/inspector and part of my job was investigating deaths, serious injuries (of clients), and other negative events in hospitals. I cannot tell you how many times I saw, firsthand, with my own eyes, the hospital attorneys and administration find a single nurse or few nurses to blame when something had gone terribly wrong, and then fire those nurses (and, of course, report them to the BON for being dangerous and incompetent -- now you're going to need a lawyer to deal with that, too!), often when those nurses clearly (IMHO, after reviewing the record and interviewing everyone involved) hadn't done anything worse than have the bad luck to have been assigned to that particular client on that particular day, in order to make the hospital look less responsible.

The hospital's insurance only covers you as long as you always follow all the hospital's policies and procedures to the letter, and haven't varied from them one iota. Are you confident that you are always doing that? Even if you are, a smart attorney (and those are the only kind hospitals have :)) can find a way to make the argument that you were operating outside the parameters and standards dictated to you by the hospital, and, therefore, are no longer covered. Even if the hospital doesn't cut you loose, that means you are being represented and advised by attorneys who are being paid to protect the hospital's interests, not yours. I, personally, would never find that acceptable, and would never take legal advice or direction from my employer's attorneys.

Obviously, you're free to make your own decision about this, as we all are; but, IMHO, it's extremely naive to believe that your employer will look out for your best interests in a bad situation.