Malpractice insurance = bad idea?

birdgardner · Jun 9, 2008

Suppose there is a case and you and your hospital are named. Your hospital is paying the attorneys. There could be a conflict of interest and good reason for you to want to retain your own attorney.

shelly304 · Jun 9, 2008

I wouldn't walk into my hospital without it! (and hubby is an attorney!)

mscsrjhm · Jun 9, 2008

Suppose there is a case and you and your hospital are named. Your hospital is paying the attorneys. There could be a conflict of interest and good reason for you to want to retain your own attorney.

The hospital does not "pay the attorneys". The insurance company for the hospital has it's own attorneys. Lots of misconceptions when it comes to this topic. I would never carry malpractice insurance, but seem to be in the great minority.

Editorial Team / Admin · Jun 10, 2008

Here's a rather lengthy and current thread on the topic:

Nurses malpractice insurance

suanna · Jun 10, 2008

I carry it as a rider on my homeowners policy. I know and trust my agent and it's cheap-

Batman24 · Jun 10, 2008

I always carry my own. I will until the day my nursing career comes to an end. I also don't spread around that I have it at work.

PMHNP10 · Jun 10, 2008

having a bad attitude puts you at greatest risk of being a target of a lawsuit; having insurance doesn't make you a target unless a lawyer asks if you are insured or if you volunteer the info

if your employer has insurance and they say you are covered, that may be true unless perhaps if you happen to veer from the P&P in any way; do you have your P&P memorized cover to cover and do you follow it 100%?

so, for example, let's say you violate 1 of the 5 rights of med admin (or how many ever there are now); there's a good chance you are gonna be left swinging in the wind

if you have a litigious patient who doesn't like your attitude, and something goes awry, you are more likely to have to defend your license; if you have a glowing disposition, there's a much less chance you will be named if you have no insurance than if you are insured

so if you look at those odds, 3 out of 4 scenarios put you at increased risk of being sued

bottom line...if you are a gambler, the smart money says to get insured unless maybe if your coworkers call Susie Sunshine and you live up to the name 100% of the time you are at work, and you are uninsured; and even then there's no guarantee you'll stay out of a legal battle

justme1972 · Jun 10, 2008

A lot of my coworkers have been debating lately about carrying malpractice insurance. I've always been a cautious person and carry it, especially because I don't know what the future holds and am under the impression that if legal issues came up after leaving a facility that they would not defend me.
Many people however are of the mindset that carrying additional insurance makes one a target for lawsuits and no one will bother to go after you if you're not insured and thus not financially worth the effort. Several people have stories of uninsured nurses being dismissed from cases after the lawyers surveyed who had coverage and who didn't.
What do y'all think?

I just got out of orientation at a hospital, and here is what we were told:

The hospital insurance will cover the nurse, but ONLY if you follow procedure EXACTLY.

Translation:

If you make a mistake, you are on your own...which means you need your own malpractice insurance.

Also, if someone ever files a complaint with the BON, you can hire your OWN counsel in order to defend your license if need be.

To me, for less than $200 to protect your assets and livelihood, that is dirt cheap.

It is a MYTH than an attorney is more likely to sue you if they know you are insured...b/c you are not required to report to a hospital if you have your own private insurance, so how is an attorney supposed to know which company you are insured with? There is no magical database to pull that information from.

This is WHY nursing malpractice insurance is so cheap..b/c they are not only rarely sued, the one that usually gets sued is either the hospital or the physician.

If nurses were routinely sued if they carried the insurance, then rates would be sky high.

Also, some states have a law that if you carry professional malpractice or errors an ommissions insurance consistent with your profession, that someone is barred from seeking a personal damage claim against you unless they can prove gross misconduct--in other words, you did something deliberately to hurt someone, with the intent of hurting someone that was criminal.

TazziRN, RN · Jun 10, 2008

It doesn't matter who pays the hospital attornies, the bottom line is that the hospital will represent you only to a certain extent. Even if you follow P&P to the letter, if the hospital were released from liability and the nurse wasn't, do you honestly think the hospital would continue to represent you? Oh no! Like any defendent, if the hospital can shift the blame to anyone else, including the nurse, it will.

In a heartbeat.

Without blinking or losing sleep over it.

The hospital is not our friend.

I found this out the hard way.

HM2VikingRN, RN · Jun 10, 2008

Fix your roof before it rains. IOW carry insurance.

wooh, BSN, RN · Jun 10, 2008

Say for a moment that I'm truly more likely to be sued because I carry malpractice insurance. Say I'm twice as likely. I'd rather be sued twice with insurance than once without it!