Its a reference slides for Nursing foundation

1. LEGAL ISSUE IN
NURSING
MANISHA PRAHARAJ
SUM NURSING COLLEGE

2. INTRODUCTION
• Law is the result of the minimum level of
shared values or ethics of a community of
people. Law and ethics are related. nurses
may act in ways that are legal but not ethical.
Both law and ethics are related to politics.
• Law means a body of rules to guide human
action.

3. DEFINITION
• Laws are “rules of conduct, established and
enforced by authority, which prohibit
extremes in behaviour so that one can live
without fear for oneself or one’s property”.
- By Sullivan and Decker, 2001

4. TYPES OF LAW
Types of
law
Private law
Contract
law
Tort law
Public law
Criminal
law

5. PUBLIC LAW
public law: it refers to the body of law that
deals with relationship between individuals
and the government and the governmental
agencies.
• Important segment of public law is criminal
law. Which deals with safety and welfare of
the public.
E.g.: theft, manslaughter, homicide etc.,

6. PRIVATE LAW
• private law or civil law : it is the body of the law that
deals with relationship among private individuals.
• It is again classified into contract law and tort law
• Contract law : is the enforcement of agreements
among private individuals.
• Tort law: It defines and enforces duties and rights
among private individuals that are not based on the
contractual agreement.
• E.g.: INVASION OF PRIVACY, ASSAULT AND BATTERY

7. TORT
1. Intentional torts
• Assault
• Battery
• Invasion of Privacy
• Defamation of character
2. Unintentional torts
• Malpractice
• negligence

8. UNINTENTIONAL TORT
NEGLIGENCE: It equates with carelessness, a
deviation from the standard of care.
Eg- fall by an elderly person who is being cared
by a nurse.
MALPRACTICE: it looks at professional
standards of care as well as the professional
status.

9. ELEMENTS OF MALPRACTICE
• Duty owed the patient – it is owed to others &
involved how one conducts oneself. When
engaging in an activity, an individual is under a
legal duty to act as an reasonable person.
• Breach of duty owed the patient – this involves
showing a deviation from the standard of care
owed the patient i.e. something was done that
should not have done or nothing was done
when it should have been done.
e.g – incorrect medication was administered.

10. • Foreseeability – it involves certain events
may reasonably be expected to cause specific
results. E.g. fall of patient with out side rail.
• Causation – it denotes breach of duty owed
caused the injury. E.g. medication is
incorrectly administered in wrong dosage.
• Injury

11. Intentional tort
• assault: it is an attempt or threat to touch
another person unjustifiably. e.g.: a nurse
who threatens a client with an injection for
refusing an oral medicine.
• battery: is the intentional touching of a
person in harmful or offensive way without
consent. e.g.: a nurse threatens an gives an
injection without consent.

12. • false imprisonment: it is the unjustifiable
detention of a person without legal warrant
or confine the person. e.g.: not allowing a
person to go LAMA or insisting a client to
confine on bed
• invasion of privacy: it injures the feeling of a
person and does not take into account the
effect of revealed information on the
standing of the person in the community.

13. • Defamation: it is a communication that is
false, or made with a careless disregard for
the truth. e.g.: a nurse writes in her nurse’s
notes that a physician is incompetent or
telling a client that her colleague is
incompetent.

14. FUNCTIONS OF LAW IN NURSING
• it provides a frame work for which nursing
actions in the care of clients are legal
• protect clients’ rights
• it helps to make boundaries of independent
nursing action.
• it assists in maintaining a standard of nursing
practice by making nurses accountable under
the law

15. REGULATION OF NURSING PRACTICE
• Regulation for nursing practice helps to bring
a standard in nursing care and thus to protect
the public.
1. Nurse Practice act
2. Credentialing
3. Standards of care

16. NURSE PRACTICE ACT
• Each state has a nurse practice act, which
protects the public by legally defining and
describing the scope of nursing practice and
it is also legally control nursing practice
through licensing requirements.
• But acts differ from country to country.

17. CREDENTIALING
• credentialing is the process of determining
and maintaining competence in nursing
practice. credentialing process helps to
maintain standards of practice &
accountability for educational preparation of
its members.
1. licensure
2.Certification
3. Accreditation

18. Licensure
• A license is a legal permit that a government
agency grants to individual to engage in the
practice of profession & to use a particular
title.
• Each country has its own method to grant or
maintain and revoke the licensure.

19. Certification
• Certification is the voluntary practice of
validating that an individual nurse has met
minimum standards of nursing competence
in specialty areas such as maternal-child
health nursing, pediatrics, school nursing
etc.,

20. Accreditation
• It is the function of a state board of nursing is
to ensure that schools preparing nurses
maintain minimum standard of education.

21. STANDARDS OF CARE
• Standard of care are the skills and learning
commonly possessed by members of a
profession.
• These standards are used to evaluate the
quality of care nurses provide and, therefore,
become legal guidelines for nursing practice.

22. LEGAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF NURSES
• Responsibility of appointing & assigning: the
nurse administrators are responsible for
staffing & supervising nursing units to ensure
safe, effective patient care.
• Responsibility in quality control
• Equipment
• Responsibility to protect public
• Responsibility for observation & reporting

23. • Responsibility for record keeping & reporting
• Responsibility for death & dying
• Knowledge regarding institutional rules &
policies.

24. THANK YOU