Scenario

Your nurse manager has asked you to identify some key points from best practices in guarding against malpractice and to develop a small reminder resource for the staff nurses. The resource could be designed to attach to the back of a name badge or put into a small notebook that reminds them of the key steps for best practice and the standards of care for legal responsibility and malpractice.

Instructions

Create a legal resource for nursing staff that:

• Examines the definition of standards of care and scope of practice within your state.
• Determines the essential elements of nursing malpractice.
• Appraises best practices for legal compliance.
• Provides stated ideas with professional language and attribution for credible sources with correct APA citation, spelling, and grammar in the legal resource.

Rubric

Exemplary examination of the definition of standards of care and scope of practice with comprehensive supporting details

Exemplary determination the essential elements of nursing malpractice with comprehensive supporting examples

Exemplary appraisal of best practices for legal compliance with comprehensive supporting examples.

This was a resource link I was provided with:

https://www.ncsbn.org/decision-making-framework.htm

Legal Components Related to Nursing Practice

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliations

Legal Components Related to Nursing Practice

State Boards of Nursing (SBN) require nurses to perform roles that are within their scopes of practice. Nursing Practice Acts (NPAs) and state-based Associations of Nurse Practitioners (ANPs) outline the rules and laws that specify the legal responsibilities of nurses and define the standards of care that nurses who have been authorized to practice in those states must follow to be able to provide quality patient care and avoid malpractice charges (MSBN, n.d.). By following the key steps for best practice and the standards of care, staff nurses are able to maintain legal responsibility and guard against malpractice.

Standards of Care and Scope of Practice

Nurses must possess relevant skills and knowledge to perform roles that are defined in their scopes of practice. The Mississippi Board of Nursing (n.d.) defines standards of care as the general guidelines that must be followed by professionals in a particular specialty area failure. Deviation from these standards has legal implications. The Mississippi Nursing Practitioners Act (MNPA) has documented the standards of practice for nurses at various nursing levels. The standards are meant to protect the public from unsafe nursing practices. For example, one of the standards of care for advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) in Mississippi is that they must practice in accordance with board-approved nursing practice guidelines. Scope of practice is defined as the boundaries that outline what members of a given profession can and cannot perform (American Nurses Association, 2021). The Mississippi Board of Nursing (MSBN) has outlined the scope of practice for registered nurses in Mississippi. For example, according to MSBN, nurse practitioners in Mississippi must engage in a collaborative practice with physicians and this collaboration must be supported by clearly documented practice guidelines (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2021).

Essential Elements of Nursing Malpractice

Nurses must be in a position to demonstrate that their actions conform with the documented standards of practice. Any action that deviates from the acceptable standards or any omission of the requirements of those standards qualifies to be malpractice (Dahlawi et al., 2021). The essential elements of nursing malpractice include; a deviation from professional duty, an act or omission that causes an injury to a patient, and a practice that is directly linked to patient harm. A patient has a right to financial compensation when nursing malpractice causes harm or injury. Additionally, malpractice can lead to fines, suspension from work, or revocation of license (Dahlawi et al., 2021). An example of nursing malpractice that meets the named elements is administering a triple dose of a drug to a pediatric patient leading to the death of the patient. Nurses must adhere to the standard of care and scope of practice for their specialties to avoid a lawsuit.

Best Practices for Legal Compliance

State Boards of Nursing have documented best practices that nurses are required to follow to ensure legal compliance. The best practices have been adopted from the Scope of Nursing Practice Decision-Making Framework developed by “the Tri-Council for Nursing, consisting of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), the American Nurses Association (ANA), the American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE), and the National League for Nursing (NLN), in collaboration with the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) (NCSBN, 2021).” Nurses should follow clearly defined steps to ensure professional compliance. For example, they should engage in activities that are supported by state Nursing Practice Acts, the activities must be supported by evidence-based research or literature, the practices must be consistent with organizational policies and procedures, the nurse must have completed the necessary education required for that specific role, availability of credentials to support the nurse current competence, availability of resources to performed the specified roles, the nurse must be in a good mental capacity to perform the roles, the nurse must be ready to accept accountability for actions performed, and the nurse is able to perform the activity or intervention to the best possible standards (NCSBN, 2021).

 

References

American Nurses Association. (n.d.). Scope of practice. https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/scope-of-practice/

Dahlawi, S., Menezes, R., G., Khan, M. A., Waris, A., Saifullah, S., & Naseer, M. (2021). Medical negligence in healthcare organizations and its impact on patient safety and public health: a bibliometric study. F1000Research, 10, 174 https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.37448.1

Mississippi Board of Nursing (MSBN). (n.d). Nursing Practice Act. https://www.msbn.ms.gov/laws-rules/nursing-practice-act

National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN). (2021). Scope of Practice Decision-Making Framework. https://www.ncsbn.org/decision-making-framework.htm

National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSBN). (2021). Scope of practice policy: Mississippi. https://www.ncsbn.org/2016JNR_Decision-Making-Framework.pdf