Joanne Sheehan and the Nurse as a Civil Defendant

Joanne Sheehan's presentation was very informative. She is a very experienced plaintiff's malpractice attorney and a RN and she gave very insightful comments on the Nurse as a Civil Defendant.

For additional information about Joanne, see her bio on the firm's website at http://www.fnlslaw.com/joanne_sheehan.html

Joanne and I had a conversation before the webinar and she discussed this also during the question and answer period whether nurses concern about being named as defendant in a nursing malpractice case is misplaced considering that a nurse is more likely to be reported to the State Nursing Board and investigated than the nurse is to be named as defendant in a malpractice case. Yet the focus for nurses tends to be on nursing negligence and nursing malpractice.

She also discouraged nurses from keeping journals of patient care activities because this information may be discoverable in a lawsuit unless its protected by the attorney-client privilege. Some nurse attorney recommend nurses kept their own journals and logs outside of the medical record. I don't recommend this from my younger years as a med mal defense attorney. Say it in the medical record and you don't need to keep a contemporaneous record. Also you are more likely to write subjective comments and off color remarks in this journal.  

There were nurses from around country as interest in the legal webinars is growing. For additional information about the legal webinars, see www.centerforamericannurses.org.