Legal Nurse Consulting: Records Analysis, Documentation Standards, and Professional Boundaries

Course Purpose

3 contact hours nursing continuing education course: Legal Nurse Consulting: Records Analysis, Documentation Standards, and Professional Boundaries.

Continuing Education Credit Designation

This educational activity is credited for 3 contact hours at completion of the activity.

Overview

3 contact hours nursing continuing education course: Legal Nurse Consulting: Records Analysis, Documentation Standards, and Professional Boundaries.

Objectives

Upon completion of this independent study, the learner will be able to:

1. Distinguish nursing records analysis from legal advice, and state which determinations in a case belong to attorneys and courts rather than to a nurse reviewer.
2. Describe how public and private law, statutory law, administrative law and criminal law each reach nursing practice.
3. Explain why a nurse is expected to know the law of the state or states in which she practises, and why not knowing is not a defence.
4. State the four elements a plaintiff must prove in a medical malpractice claim and give an example of each.
5. Define standard of care as the retrieved source defines it, and explain why it is not the same as ideal or perfect care.
6. Trace the tort liability pathway of duty, breach, proximate cause and damages, and explain foreseeability.
7. Distinguish joint and several, vicarious, proportional and strict liability, and say which one explains employer exposure for a nurse's acts.
8. Explain what the nursing record is expected to contain at admission and who signs it.
9. Explain how competing purposes for the record, poorly designed forms and shadow documentation affect what a reviewer will and will not find in a chart.
10. Describe informed consent as a communication process, list the recognised exceptions, and state how surrogate decision-makers are identified.
11. Define protected health information and name the circumstances in which the retrieved sources say it may be disclosed without patient consent.
12. Describe never events, the components of disclosure that matter to patients, and the purpose of root cause analysis in reading an adverse outcome.

Who this course is for:

Advanced Practice Registered Nurses, registered nurses, licensed practical or vocational nurses, and other healthcare providers in any setting who want continuing education on Legal Nurse Consulting: Records Analysis, Documentation Standards, and Professional Boundaries.

Course outline

12 sections · finish in any order across devices

1. 1

   Course overview and learning objectives

2. 2

   Introduction

3. 3

   What a Nurse Reviewer Does, and Where Nursing Ends and Law Begins

4. 4

   How Law Reaches the Bedside: Public, Private, Statutory, Administrative and Criminal

5. 5

   Negligence and Malpractice: The Four Elements and the Standard of Care

6. 6

   Who Pays, and Why: Tort Categories, Foreseeability and Employer Exposure

7. 7

   Reading the Record as an Artefact: What Documentation Is Actually For

8. 8

   Consent, Capacity and Surrogates in the Record

9. 9

   Privacy and Protected Health Information When You Hold the Chart

10. 10

    Adverse Outcomes: Never Events, Disclosure, Root Cause Analysis and Handoffs

11. 11

    Nursing Considerations

12. 12

    Conclusion

This Course Satisfies

Requirement summaries come from our state requirement records. All Users of Fast CE For Less’s website and content are responsible for knowing their state’s license and renewal requirements.

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