Nursing Law & Order

Just a Telephone Call, Right?

You return home from an eight hour shift that turned into a ten hour shift. You are scheduled to return to work in the morning. You dash home to start preparing dinner when the telephone rings. You answer it on the first. Its a nurse investigator with your state Board of Nursing. The investigator wants to ask you questions about a complaint filed against your license by your former employer.

What do you do?

Advanced Practice Nurses

Would you expect APNs (nurse midwives, nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetist, and clinical nurse specialists) to be more or less knowledgable about nursing law than RNs without advanced education or training and LPNs?

What is your opinion?

Liability Insurance

All professional liability insurance policies for nurses are not made equal. If you are considering purchasing your own policy, you are taking a step in the right direction. Take an additional step and contrast and compare policies offered by several insurers. Why?

You don't want to wait until a complaint is filed against your license or you are named as a defendant in a lawsuit to discover that your insurer reimburses you at the conclusion of the case for legal fees and costs vs. your insurer allows you to assign your benefits to an attorney, who in return may not require a $5,000-$10,000 retainer to establish an attorney-client relationship.

You want to know upfront if Insurer A covers all state and federal regulatory board investigations related to your license which may include state agencies like the Board of Pharmacy, Attorney General's office, Office of Inspector General, etc. and federal investigations or if the Insurer A only provides coverage for Board of Nursing disciplinary investigations and adjudications.

Don't assume all policies are equal and you don't want to find out later when you are facing spending thousands of dollars to secure counsel that you could have purchased a "better" insurance policy for the same price as your current policy or for a few dollars more. 

Unions for Nurses

I am attending the SEIU Leadership Assembly in Columbus, Ohio on Saturday in my capacity as a home health RN. Independent Providers (IPs) in Ohio may be organizing under the SEIU. I am not sure if its nurses (RNs and LPNs) or nurses and HHA and HHM who also works as IPs. Over two hundred IPs from across the state are expected. I am looking forward to the dialogue.

Are you a member of a union? In your opinion what do unions offer to RNs and LPNs?

LPNs & the Nursing Shortage

Have you read the article in the July 2006 American Journal of Nursing "Can the Use of LPNs Alleviate the Nursing Shortage?"

If not, its a must read regardless of whether you are a LPN or an RN. After reading the article, I wondered how my career path would have changed if a guidance counselor or my grandmother steered me towards a practical nursing program instead of RN training.

My plan after graduating from high school was to start a four year program for prelaw and then apply to law school. It was my grandmother who told me when I was eighteen "there are too many attorneys, go to nursing school", and I did. She worked in a hospital for a number of years and encouraged me to be an RN.

The authors in the article suggest that minorities should be encouraged to start in practical nursing. What do you think? Should we encourage minorities interested in nursing to attend practical or vocational nursing programs or professional nursing programs for RNs at the diploma, associate, or bachelor degree level?

This is for my grandmother. I can't thank you enough for your words of wisdom that you gave me in 1989. Little did I know how your advice and encouragement would shape and influence my career path and life choices. Thank you again for your wisdom and guidance. Thank you for encouraging me to attend nursing school. Thank you for encouraging me to attend law school when others said "you are a nurse, why would you want to be an attorney."