Blessyl Grace L.

Billones BSN-4B

LEGAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF NURSES

Importance
Like any member of the other professions, a professional nurse has many legal
responsibilities to assume in the practice of her or his profession. These legal
responsibilities are entwined in every service she renders to the patient and they may be
felt by her especially when questions arise involving negligence in the performance of
her duties, or in the care or supervision of the patient, or in the fulfillment of the
contractual obligations. It’s importance to a nurse that she knows the legal
responsibilities attached to the various phases of her professional practice so that she
may be properly guided in the discharge of her functions.
A nurse who knows her legal responsibilities will find it easier to avoid incurring
criminal liability. To know what these responsibilities are, she does not need to have a
mastery of the law. It is sufficient that she possesses such a working knowledge of her
legal entanglements and avoid criminal liability.

NURSING CARE:
A nurse, the performance of nursing service, shall be responsible for the utilization
of the nursing process, which includes among others, the implementation of the nursing
care. Nursing care involves the traditional and innovative approaches in the nursing
techniques and procedures, comfort measures, health teachings and administration of
prescription for treatment, therapist, medication and hypodermic, intramuscular and
intravenous injections. In short, a nurse who accepts an employment such undertakes to
hold him or herself responsible for the performance or execution of every nursing care
and procedures. Every service, which a nurse renders to a patient, is coupled with a legal
responsibility of some kind.
Where a hospital nurse for instance by her act or omission, cause damage to the
patient, she will be liable for damages if she is at fault or negligent. That hospital shall
also likewise be liable for the damages caused by her, unless it can prove that it has
observed all the diligence of a good father of a family to prevent the damage.

CIVIL CODE OF THE PHILIPPINES

Art 2176. Whoever by act or omission causes damage to another, there being fault or
negligence, is obliged to pay for the damage done. Such fault or negligence, if there is no
pre existing contractual relation between the parties, is called a quasi-delict.

Art 2180. The obligation imposed by Article 2176 is demandable not only for one’s own
acts or omissions, but also for those of persons for whom one is responsible.

The father and, in case of his death or incapacity, the mother, are responsible for the
damages caused by the minor children who live in their company.

Guardians are liable for damages caused by the minors or incapacitated persons who are
under their authority and live in their company.
The owners and managers of an establishment or enterprise are likewise responsible for
damages caused by their employees in the service of the branches in which the latter are
employed or on the occasion of their functions.

Employers shall be liable for damages caused by their employees and household helpers
acting within the scope of their assigned tasks, even though the former are not engaged
in any business or industry

The State is responsible in like manner when it acts through a special agent: but not
when the damage has been caused by the official to whom the task done properly
pertains, in which case what is provided in Article 2176 shall be applicable.

Lastly, teachers are heads of establishments of arts and trades shall be liable for
damages caused by their pupils and students or apprentices, so long as they remain in
their custody.

The responsibility treated of in this Article shall cease when the persons herein
mentioned proved that they observed all the diligence of the good father of the family to
prevent damage.

While ordinarily a nurse maybe exempted from liability for the damages done to the
patient under her care whenever the service she renders to him done in pursuance of a
doctor’s order, nevertheless, in certain cases, she may be held liable.

Courts will not hesitate to find nurse guilty of negligence in the supervision of the patient
if she failed or omitted to take precautions or to undertake steps to safeguard the
patients against possible injury that may arise in the course of their treatment and the
care, or if due to her negligent or careless execution of the doctor’s order, her patient
suffers an injury.

OPERATION OF PATIENT
It is an established practice in hospitals that before a patient is submitted to an
operation, is consent thereto or the approval of his parent, relative, or guardian must first
be obtained. Since the nurse is the person who usually attends to the matter of securing
the patients signature on th form for consent to surgery, it is all-important to an at
ending nurse whenever a patent is under her care is to be operated on, to see to it that
the patient affixes his signature on the prescribe form without a necessary delay.

RESPONSIBILITY IN ABORTION CASES

Sometimes a patient who is in a condition of abortion enters the hospital for

treatment and confinement. It is a practice of a hospital in such a case to have the
patient assumed full responsibility of her abortion. By requiring her to sign a statement
relieving the hospital and its personnel from any liability therefore.
A nurse should always be aware of possible criminal liability attached to abortions.
Under the revised Penal Code, a physician or midwife who, taking advantage of his or her
scientific knowledge or skill, shall cause an abortion or assist in causing the same, shall
suffer the penalty for imprisonment from 17 years, 4 months and one day to 20 years; if
violence was used or 10 years and one day to 12 years; if without violence but was done
without consent of the patient 4 years, 2 months and one day to 6 years.

UNAUTHORIZED DISCHARGE OF PATIENTS:

 Sometimes a patient should insist to leave the hospital against the advice of the
attending physician. In such case the nurse should relieve herself of any responsibilities
for his unauthorized discharge by requiring him to sign a statement whereby he assumes
full responsibility for leaving the hospital without the consent of the physician and
whereby he releases the hospital personnel from any responsibility for such discharge.

CONCEPT OF ACCOUNTABILITY:
The accountability of a nurse to the patient, physician, and employer or to the
public at large has reference to the quality of nursing care she renders. A contractual
obligations which a nurse practitioners has assumed or agreed to assume, exposes her to
a certain degree of accountability, whenever a nurse enters to a contract or agreement
to perform a nursing service, she must expect that she will be held responsible for the
proper and faithful performance of her contractual obligations.
The accountability of a nurse practitioner to the public for the quality of her
nursing services is presumed because the primordial aim of the nursing law is to “protect
te public”. Consequently, it is not only the power but the duty of the Board of Nursing to
discipline a nurse practitioner that is found to be professionally incompetent or guilty of
unethical practices.
The trend toward the granting of more independence to the professional nurses to
their practice so as to enable them to give optimum services to the public has projected
new significance to the issue of the nurse’s accountability to the public for the quality of
nursing care she renders.

PROFESSIONAL NEGLIGENCE:
Negligence is defined as the doing of the thing which a reasonably prudent person
would have not done, or the failure to do the thing which a reasonably prudent person
would have done, in like or similar circumstances, it is the failure to exercise that degree
of care and prudence which a reasonably prudent person would have exercise in like or
similar circumstances.
Negligence consists in the violation of the duty owing by the party inflicting the
injury to the person injured.
A nurse may be considered negligent in the case of her patient if, as required in
the due performance of her duties, she neglected to do that which she ought to have
done, or did that which she ought not to have done, or if she failed to exercise that
degree of care which a reasonably prudent nurse, in the practice of her profession, would
have exercised under like or similar circumstances.

Malpractice and Negligence

Malpractice is defined as any professional misconduct, or any unreasonable lack of
skill or fidelity in the performance of profession or fiduciary duties; it means
objectionable practice, or a practice contrary to established rules. It has been long
recognized that malpractice applies to physician and surgeons who commit negligent act
in treating patient or who unskillfully treat patients not within the established standards
of quality. Today, the term malpractice is sometimes used loosely to refer to the
negligence of a member of any professional groups.