The following is a conclusion from a closed claims report on lawsuits against nurses. It might be helpful.
While nurse-as-custodian claims continue to be asserted, plaintiff's lawyers have now begun to pursue claims that focus on the nurse as a clinician, responsible for using professional judgment in the course of treatment.
In these claims, nurses are perceived as highly skilled and educated professionals who are charged with making clinical observations, exercising discretion and taking appropriate treatment actions based upon a patient's changing clinical picture. This shift reflects, to some extent, the increasing number and importance of specialties and areas of expertise within the profession. The following are examples of the new paradigm of nursing claims:
■ Following a fall by a geriatric patient, the nurse is sued for failure to change the service plan despite increasing problems with gait and behavior.
■ A child is born with profound brain damage, and the nurse is alleged to have failed to properly interpret fetal monitoring strips.
■ A lawsuit charges the nurse with failure to appreciate a patient's risk for skin breakdown and to take appropriate preventive measures.
■ After a patient experiences adverse drug reactions, the family alleges that the nurse failed to properly administer and provide the correct dosage.
■ A patient in the emergency department has a cardiac arrest, and a lawsuit is filed alleging that the triage nurse failed to appreciate acute cardiac symptomatology.
This shift has afforded increasing opportunities for plaintiff's attorneys to name nurses as defendants in medical malpractice lawsuits. Mistakes made by nurses in their role as "custodian" were infrequent, and such mistakes led to easily understood claims that could be resolved without resorting to litigation. However, the new generation of "clinician" claims permits nurses to be included in any case in which a patient receiving complex treatment has a poor outcome.
This is taken from
1. CNA. CNA Healthpro Nurse Claims Study. November 25, 2009 2009.
My link to this report is no longer working.
Here is a more recent update from 2011
1. CNA. Understanding Nurse Liability, 2006-2010: A Three-part Approach. July 2, 2013 2011.
https://www.cna.com/vcm_content/CNA/internet/Static%20File%20for%20Download/Risk%20Control/Medical%20Services/UnderstandingNurseLiability,2006-2010-AThree-PartApproach-11-2011.pdf
Susie2310
2,121 Posts
SoldierNurse22,
For what it's worth, I read a case study where the nurse's assessments and efforts to reach the doctor/s to obtain appropriate medical care for his/her patient were well documented, and although the patient still suffered a bad outcome the nurse was not held liable for that outcome as he/she had made multiple efforts to obtain appropriate medical care for the patient.
I agree with you that nurses are placed in virtually impossible positions.