Negligence vs. Malpractice (Nursing)

00:01 Alright, let's look at two a little bit scary words, negligence and malpractice.

00:07 You're gonna hear this a lot in regards to legality in nursing, and I know these are scary words, but they represent unsafe care for patients so this is why this is so important.

00:18 And if a professional is guilty of either one of these, again, this could result in a lawsuit or even loss of our license, and man, I don't know about you, but you're gonna work really hard for that, it's a real big shame to lose and I know it's something we take pride in, so make sure we're delivering good care, so keep in mind your negligence and malpractice possibilities.

00:43 So, let's talk about negligence. So, this is a failure to provide reasonable care.

00:49 So, let's look at the example.

00:52 So, maybe not providing adequate instructions at the time of discharge.

00:56 Well, your gonna say, "Okay, well, what is adequate?" Here's a great example of that.

01:01 Let's say I have to send my patient home with a group of injections for their treatment, like some intramuscular or maybe some subcutaneous, which go into the abdomen injections.

01:13 Now if I just send someone home with a box of needles and say, "Here you go, see you later." I can only imagine what can happen with that.

01:22 So, if a patient goes home, they don't know where to inject it, they can inject the wrong spot, they could not know how important it is and how often to use it, so you can imagine this is a great example of not providing reasonable care.

01:36 I did not give them enough information to make sure that they knew what they were doing to take care of themselves at home, so that's a great example of negligence. So. let's now talk about malpractice.

01:48 This providing sub-standard care that can result to injury in the patient.

01:53 So now, let's look at this next example.

01:56 Unfortunately, this is a popular malpractice issue that can come up and definitely result in legal issues.

02:03 So not responding to a bed alarm in a reasonable time frame, and that patient gets up and maybe falls and hits their head.

02:11 Now the problem with that, that can result in a really serious injury and sometimes even death.

02:17 Now, you may not have heard of a bed alarm before, but what that is, is we put that piece of equipment underneath a patient that maybe they're confused or they are weak, and we're worried that they're gonna fall, so when we get up and when our weight shifts off that bed alarm, it's gonna sound loudly.

02:35 A lot of the times in your clinical, you're gonna see patient's bolting, you're gonna see your, excuse me, clients bolting, you're gonna see staff bolting in that room to make sure that patient doesn't fall, so if we just hear that alarm, and it goes and goes and goes.

02:48 We walk past that room, we don't respond in a reasonable time and that patient hurts themselves. That is example of malpractice.