Posts by Nursing Law Center
▪︎ Avoiding Impeachment – Deposition and Trial Tips for Nurses and Expert Witnesses
Impeachment is the legal process of attacking a witness’s credibility by exposing contradictions or mistakes. In practice, opposing counsel will scrutinize your earlier statements (in reports, depositions or prior cases) to find any inconsistency with your trial testimony. In other words, if you testify one way at a deposition or in a report or in…
Read More▪︎ Top 5 Reasons Nurses Are Disciplined by Boards of Nursing and Case Examples
#1. Unprofessional Conduct: This broad category covers behaviors that violate ethical standards, including falsifying records, breaching patient confidentiality, or engaging in inappropriate relationships with patients. Case Example: In 2022, a nurse in California was disciplined for falsifying patient records to cover up a medication error. The nurse documented administering a prescribed dose of insulin to…
Read More▪︎ The Most Frequent Reasons Nurses Are Sued for Malpractice
These failures to act as a reasonably competent nurse would have most commonly resulted in the patient’s death or pressure injuries. Less common were infections, fractures and fetal/birth brain injuries. As a LNC you need to take these breaches in the standard of care and explain them in a concise and well written report that…
Read More▪︎ Monitor Alarms Turned Off Result in Catastrophic Cases!
I have periodically been involved in cases where monitor alarms have been silenced, resulting in catastrophic injuries to the patient. In the most recent case I was involved in regarding this issue, a 40 y.o. patient who was hospitalized for pancreatitis suffered an unwitnessed cardiac arrest, but no one knew it because the cardiac monitor…
Read More▪︎ There Are Many Things Nurses Can Do to Help Protect Themselves From Malpractice Claims
Nurses can take steps to protect themselves from negligence and malpractice claims while ensuring patient safety. Here are some of the most effective ways to minimize risks: 1. Follow Standard Procedures & Policies: Follow facility protocols and evidence based best nursing practices. Use checklists for medication administration, wound care, and other high-risk procedures. Follow the…
Read More▪︎ New Malpractice Case – Old Problem
If you work in healthcare you know that retained foreign objects are a common source of malpractice cases against physicians who do surgery. But did you know nurses who perform the “sponge count” may also be named as a defendant in these cases. A lawsuit filed against Northwestern Medicine McHenry Hospital recently alleges a surgical…
Read More▪︎ Analyzing Breaches of the Standard of Care in Malpractice Cases (LNC)
In medical malpractice cases, one of the central issues is whether a healthcare professional breached the standard of care. The “standard of care” refers to the level and type of care that a reasonably competent and skilled healthcare professional (nurse or physician), with a similar background and in a similar medical community, would have provided…
Read More▪︎ I Just Testified As an Expert Witness in This Case…(LNC)
Last month I testified as an expert witness in this unfortunate case involving a patient who was seen in the ED for severe, acute pancreatitis and severe dehydration. His condition was documented as “very unstable.” Although one ED physician documented that the patient should be admitted to the ICU, when she went off shift another physician…
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