What is the Best Liability Insurance for Nurses?

What Does Liability Insurance for Nurses Cover?

As a nurse, it's your job to take care of patients in some sort of healthcare setting. This can be any setting from a hospital to a geriatric home. No matter where you practice, problems may occur. You provide the best care possible for your patients, but sometimes accidents happen. Insurance for health professionals can help cover the unexpected.

Should I Get Malpractice Insurance as a Nurse?

Potential claims of negligence against you when you're a nurse are real and do happen. At times, your work requires that you ask patients for consent, telling them what they'll receive and the likely outcomes of your medical care.

Whether they're in the position to consent or not, only proceed when you're covered against any malpractice that's beyond your control. One of the largest challenges that nurses face deals with how patients define the care they're receiving.

Your physician and med control might even give you direct orders, approving medications, interventions, and the immobilization of someone. You need the confidence that your good-intended work doesn't result in lawsuits and negligence claims.

Many leading nurses rely on liability coverage that protects them from legal course in the case of an incident they didn't cause or that was known to be possible. There are insurance packages to solve such cases.

What Kind of Insurance Do Nurses Get?

Some employers offer their nurses a bit of coverage, but this is rarely enough to keep you protected from all of the liabilities nurses face. In a work agreement that you have with an employer, their insurance reputation, premiums, or role within an incident give them different liability than you. Your employer, in fact, might not offer insurance of any kind. As you begin to think of liability insurance, think in terms of the specific or general practices you are a part of.

So what does liability insurance for nurses cover? Here are the most common options you have within the insurance industry.

Professional liability

As a professional, you are someone who provides private services like a caregiver. To be a professional, there are promises you must make in order to obtain clients and to give them an idea of what results you provide, if any.

What someone pays for and what they then receive can differ to the point of legal negligence. When your work has this potential threat, you can protect yourself by learning which areas of malpractice you can be liable for. Here are a few:

• Misrepresentation: As a nurse, you must be honest with your patients. Being clear about what they'll receive and what the results will be is difficult. There are waivers and other consent forms you can rely on for this reason.

• Violation of faith: Some of your clients might realize the need to be honest with you but on the basis of good faith. Though liability insurance is a good help, a patient can charge you for violating the trust they placed in you.

• Negligence: Professionals who have great intentions but get prosecuted for negligence have a simple way of protecting themselves. Your job as a nurse requires you to enter stressful conditions, but being insured protects you from human error.

Employer liability

Your employer has a liability threshold they will not go beyond unless conditions force them to. Essentially, you are a liability because you must choose to follow their guidelines and work procedures. The faults occurring on your end might be a result of your employer failing to provide the right education or training.

In such cases, however, your employer will protect themselves, finding ways to say that a medical error was caused by a specific employee. That's why it's important to make sure you have enough coverage on your own.

General liability

General liability, though capable of working with other options, is what nurses rely on in most cases. Just think of this in simple terms; at work, anything can happen.

A patient who comes to visit you experiences an injury on the way, for example. They can exhaust their due process and press charges though you weren't involved in the accident.

General liability is what best defends nurses against the unexpected, the unjust, and the misinformed. Here are the damage types:

• Bodily: The damage done to a patient's actual person can be directly related to your work or simply something near your vicinity. Cases that are presented as directly your fault need to be handled with the right insurance and preparation.

• Property: A patient's car, dog, or wheelchair are examples of property that can be damaged as you work or while your patient is under your care.

• Reputation: In the example of a plastic surgeon, results that don't align to initial expectations can make a patient feel insecure. Whether a nurse's actions intentionally damage a patient's reputation or not, compensation can be sought.

Do Nurses Need Professional Liability Insurance?

Risk is inherent in every business and public service. Nurses don't need liability insurance, but they benefit from it, and no matter where they work, they must rely on some type of coverage. The risks of encountering incidents of unexpected death or injury should not be taken lightly.

Here is a quick list of six types of liability that you can be charged for when you are not properly covered:

1. Malpractice
2. Licensing
3. Cause of death
4. Coma
5. Wrong medication
6. Unprofessional conduct

Professional liability insurance cost for nurses

The cost of professional liability insurance for nurses will vary based on a number of factors. For instance, the setting that you are in can play a big part in what you pay for coverage. Additionally, your location and the coverage amount will affect the price you pay.

Typically, nurses can expect to pay around $100 annually for malpractice insurance. To make sure that your area of nursing is covered, it's important to look at malpractice insurance cost by specialty.

Do Nursing Students Need Malpractice Insurance?

One thing to keep in mind when asking about the full liability of a medical student is supervision. Working directly with and under an acting physician protects student nurses. Students must simply discipline themselves to do only what they're authorized to. Hospitals and care facilities that receive students, however, do ask for some form of liability coverage.

You'll be specifically asked to obtain medical professional liability coverage. When seeking to learn what is the best liability coverage for nurses, start with asking about what your field of study requires.

Here are four of the common fields that medical malpractice insurance companies cover:

1. Cardiac

Cardiovascular disease kills at the rate of one person every 36 seconds around the globe. Your spectrum of protection needs to be broader when serving patients who are prone to ongoing illnesses. Cardiologists and nurses have access to insurance that can minimize how much fault they receive in cardiac cases.

Since failure to diagnose and improper procedure are the common claims made in cardiology, your liability protection covers you in these instances.

2. Critical Care

Precaution, study, and practice are always helpful in avoiding legal incidents, but coverage that protects you against claims calling for you to pay a patient for their damages is required. Critical care is medical attention given to what are the most critical illnesses that people sustain.

Your attention to detail, which includes maintaining your personal health, is required as you work in stressful conditions as a critical care nurse. There is an insurance package just for this field of practice.

3. Geriatric

The training to deal with geriatrics calls for a delicate understanding of the challenges we have as we age. Geriatric nurses agree that one of the biggest threats they face are the legal claims made by their patients' families.

A nurse who cares for a patient whose family lives elsewhere is in a situation that any loved one can be insecure with. Caregivers are unique nurses who might find that their work demands personal relationships. However, they still need legal coverage.

4. Emergency (ER)

Being a registered nurse is an honor that comes with the potential to positively impact people's lives every day. There are, however, quite a few risks you can face as an ER nurse.

Your license to work can be revoked if you lack the proper protection. When your reputation is at risk, liability insurance is an option for you.