liability insurance-personal stories

PAERRN20 · Nov 13, 2009

I would just buy the insurance. It gives you some piece of mind and isn't that expensive. You never know what you may end up in court over.

Remember to practice as if you don't have insurance and have everything to lose.

meandragonbrett · Nov 13, 2009

$100 a month? where are you getting your quote from? They're ripping you off. More like $100 per YEAR from NSO.

Goldenhare · Nov 13, 2009

Buy it! Don't count on your employer. I spend slightly less than $100.00 a year. It is worth every penny in peace of mind.

UnionRN2 · Nov 13, 2009

Buy it. It is not that expensive.

Your employer may tell you that you are covered by their "umbrella" coverage and that you are covered. Don't buy into it. My sister is an attorney that used to work for a law firm representing a Michigan hospital. Eventually she worked her way up to where it became her responsibility to figure out a way to pin the employee for not following policy/procedure. She said most of the time there were mitigating circumstances as to why the nurse did not follow policy, but the court will only look at what is in the policy. (BTW, she quit that job as she has nurses in the family and could not in good conscience make the nurse guilty all the time.)

BTW, I don't know about other states, but she told me in Michigan that if you are sued, whatever is in your name alone is not protected and can be taken in a judgment against you. However, anything jointly held cannot be taken. For instance, I worried about the house being in both mine and my husband's name. She said if sued no one could go after my house as it is in both of our names and they cannot give him half the house. So all my big ticket items are in his name too - just in case.

Also, document-document-document. Our hospital has gone to computerized charting and many nurses get used to just clicking and not doing any real documenting. It is a hospital attorneys dream and will be your worst nightmare if called into court. Protect yourself....document behavior, who said what, who ordered what, which doctor you talked to and what you discussed, etc. At the beginning of each shift, I type in a narrative assessment -head to toe- so if called into court I can read that and get a clear clinical picture of the patient. Never chart "house officer notified". Chart the name of every docotr you talk to. The hospital will convienently lose the list of "on call doctors" when they need to. If you talked about the potassium level of 3.0 and he chose not to address it, chart that you discussed labs including the potassium level of 3.0 and there were no new orders. It proves you specifically told the doctor. In many of the computerized charting canned areas you will find there is not a place to chart what you want to chart. For example, pt's abusive behavior does not fall under cardiovascular or respiratory. So I alway pick the one that says "patient status update". That way I will know where to look if ever questioned (and this is where my narrative assessment goes too.)

Recently, I was ordered to put restrainsts on a patient that the supervisor wanted tied down so that I could admit another patient. The family was not there but specifically had stated no restraints were to be put on this lady. I argued with the supervisor. The doctor refused to order restraints for the convenience of the supervisor. She threatened me with insubordination and being fired. You can darn betcha I charted her name and that she ordered restraints. 1. If that family sued and I had not charted her name, then it would have been me who took it upon myself to apply restraints without an order. 2. If that lady had gotten injured as a result of those restraints being on I would have been liable - by charting the supervisor's name she became liable. 3. You can be arrested for unlawful restraint, go to jail, and lose your license. Do you think Ms. Supervisor would own up to ordering restraints? No way. Of course, I was called in and was told it was "unprofessional" to chart her name. To heck with "unprofessional", how about what she did was illegal? Thank goodness I have access to an attorney 24 hours a day. Most nurses don't. Nothing could be done to me because they knew what she did was very wrong. (And why doesn't Joint Commission ask the nurses if they have ever been threatened with losing their job if they do not do something against JC policies? I'm sure a lot of nurses have some beans to spill if they ask the right questions.)

classicdame, MSN, EdD · Nov 13, 2009

your employer's insurance will not cover your own bad decisions. I recommend you have a policy. I pay about $100/year thru homeowner's insurance as a rider.

elkpark · Nov 13, 2009

Buy it. It is not that expensive.
Your employer may tell you that you are covered by their "umbrella" coverage and that you are covered. Don't buy into it. My sister is an attorney that used to work for a law firm representing a Michigan hospital. Eventually she worked her way up to where it became her responsibility to figure out a way to pin the employee for not following policy/procedure. She said most of the time there were mitigating circumstances as to why the nurse did not follow policy, but the court will only look at what is in the policy. (BTW, she quit that job as she has nurses in the family and could not in good conscience make the nurse guilty all the time.)

:yeahthat:

Fortunately (knock on wood :)), I've never had to use my insurance (but I would never work a single day without it!) However, I worked for several years as a hospital surveyor for my state and CMS. In that role, I frequently went into hospitals to investigate complaints or deaths (or other untoward incidents) that were obviously potentially lawsuits (we were there to investigate from a regulatory perspective, but you could tell from the circumstances that, in many cases, someone was likely to end up suing over the incident). In many of those cases, we would often be met at the front door of the hospital (on an unannounced visit!) by administrators eager to assure us that their internal investigation had already determined that the entire unfortunate situation was Nurse X's fault and they had already fired Nurse X (to show their good intentions and attempt to minimize the hospital's responsibility/liability) -- golly, we hadn't realized we had a dangerous and incompetent nurse on our staff, but we fixed that as soon as we found out ... Upon reviewing the records, it was often clear to me that Nurse X hadn't really done anything wrong, other than have the bad luck to have been assigned to that particular client on that particular day, but the hospital attorneys and risk management people had figured out a way to blame Nurse X, and there wasn't anything I could do about that other than not implicate Nurse X in my final report (which didn't really make much difference).

Now, if you have the bad luck to be Nurse X, you're no longer covered by the hospital's liability coverage as soon as you're fired. If you don't already have your own coverage, you can't go out and buy it now, because there's no insurance company on the planet that will sell you coverage for an incident that has already happened (you can buy insurance that will cover you for future events, but that won't help you in the current situation). Even if the hospital doesn't outright fire you, they still will not cover you, because their argument in court is going to be that you are to blame for the occurrence, not them -- their attorneys can hardly stand up and argue that in court, and then turn around and defend you in the next breath (everyone in the courtroom would laugh at them!)

I can't tell you how many times I witnessed that exact scenario with my own eyes during my time as a surveyor. Hospitals tell you that you covered under their insurance because they don't want you to have your own coverage -- they want to keep you "barefoot and pregnant," and dependent on their attorneys for legal advice in any circumstance that comes up in which you need legal advice. I have nothing against hospital attorneys; they're just doing their jobs (which most of them are v. good at) -- but they are being paid to represent the facility's interests, not yours. If protecting the facility's interests means throwing you under the bus, they will do it in a heartbeat and not lose any sleep over it.

Standard nursing liability policies also typically include coverage for legal representation if you are called before the BON to defend your license, or if you are called as a witness in a suit against someone else, either of which is, realistically, statistically, much more likely to happen over the course of your career than you being sued. In both those situations, you'd definitely want legal representation, and it would be v. expensive out of pocket (each hour with an attorney would cost you more than the typical annual premium for the insurance).

BEDPAN76 · Nov 13, 2009

When you carry malpractice, at least with NSO, you have $10,000 of legal protection if you have to go before your Nursing Board. Trust me, get the policy NOW! :nuke:

Sand_Dollar, BSN · Nov 14, 2009

I'm not even a student yet, but I have already made plans to have it the day my clinicals start. Just like car insurance, you can pay and pay without ever needing it, but it takes just one incident to be thankful you have it. Protect yourself and your family.