Clinical Issues
Malpractice and the Neonatal Intensive‐Care Nurse

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Perinatal nursing has become a specialty vulnerable to litigation, due to parents’ high expectations of health care providers’ ability to monitor for adverse events and intervene appropriately to prevent harm. When a neonate is injured during the perinatal period, a frequent response is to look for someone to blame. Neonatal nursing is considered a specialty area, requiring specialized knowledge and training. By adhering to recognized and accepted internal and external policies, neonatal nurses will uphold the standard of care set for their area of practice and avoid legal liability.

Section snippets

The Standard of Care

Regardless of geographical location, the same standard of care is expected to be applied by all neonatal nurses. Neonatal nursing is a specialty of maternal-child nursing, and the neonatal nurse must be cognizant of the professional practice standards for that specialty. A Louisiana court (King v. Department of Health, 1999) stated:

A nurse who practices her profession in a particular specialty owes to her patients the duty of possessing the degree of knowledge or skill ordinarily possessed by

Scope of Practice

The concern related to scope of practice is whether the nurse is legally performing within or outside the scope of a nursing license to practice. In the arena of high-risk neonatal nursing, which is a subspecialty area of maternal-child nursing, components of medical and nursing practice have been blended and the boundaries between them may become blurred. High-risk neonatal nurses commonly intubate infants, insert central intravenous catheters, and lead resuscitation teams, often ordering

Components of Neonatal Nursing Malpractice

The term malpractice means that the nurse's conduct failed to meet the appropriate standard of care (the care that a reasonable and prudent nurse would provide) and this conduct resulted in damages to the patient (Gic, 2001). Not all transgressions are automatically considered to be malpractice, however. The practice of nursing does not guarantee perfect outcomes, nor is a nurse expected to be responsible for unexpected occurrences during the course of care unless those outcomes can be

Discussion

Today's professional neonatal nurse is held accountable for his or her actions and therefore can be identified as a defendant in a malpractice suit. When a neonatal outcome is not what was expected, parents frequently look for someone to blame for a course of events. When a baby is injured, the cost of liability is high, due to the infant's long life expectancy, the long statute of limitations for injuries to children, and sympathy toward the family. Parents and families experience a great deal

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