Providing medical care to patients can be difficult since each patient needs specialised care or tailored treatment plans. Medical professionals, like nurses, have to work carefully to ensure that they don’t do anything that could harm their patients or make their condition worse. This, unfortunately, can happen accidentally, which is why nurses should have some form of insurance to protect them from lawsuits.
Why It’s Important For Nurses To Hold Insurance
While nurses are usually diligent to provide the very best care to their patients, they are human and could accidentally make a mistake or error that results in physical or emotional harm to their patients. Some of the most common risks include:
- Incorrect medication or wrong dosage.
- Mistakes when recording important details such as patient vitals.
- Failure to report changes in conditions that result in an illness or injury getting worse.
- Injury caused by slips and falls when assisting a patient.
- Forgetting to secure the correct paperwork or liability releases.
- Providing incorrect aftercare information.
Having the right insurance policy in place can help protect nurses from legal action brought against them by patients, the family members of a patient, or even the nursing board. In most cases, physicians are often the target of such claims, but nurses can get sued as well.
Understanding The Various Insurance Options Available To Nurses
There are a wide range of options when it comes to securing the right insurance coverage. This can be extremely overwhelming. The good news is that there are only two main policy types that are most popular within the nursing profession - Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII) and Public Liability Insurance.
- Professional Indemnity Insurance - This type of insurance is mandatory for all practicing nurses and midwives in Australia. This requirement is a result of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law passed in 2009. PII is designed to protect professionals from errors, mistakes, or bad advice given when providing medical services to patients.
- Public Liability Insurance - This insurance is not legally required; however, it can be a great addition to provide additional coverage. This insurance covers physical harm caused to patients or other members of the public. For example, if you forget to clean up a spill that causes a patient’s family member to fall and get injured. This type of insurance also protects against claims for property damage as well.
How To Get Insurance Coverage
There are different ways to secure the right insurance coverage. This often depends on how the nurse is employed. For nurses who work full-time at a medical facility or hospital, indemnity insurance is often provided by their employer. Nurses should confirm what coverage is provided to ensure that no supplemental policies are needed. Self-employed (and some contracted nurses) will need to secure their own policy through an insurance broker or local trade organisation. For nurses who fall into both categories, they may have more than one policy to cover each situation.
Helping Nurses Stay Protected With Tailored Insurance
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