Nursing Foundations: Legal, Ethical, Nursing Process, and Historical Evolution Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering legal and ethical nursing principles, the nursing process, clinical judgment models, and historical developments in nursing.

Criminal Law

A legal category involving conduct that is offensive and detrimental to society as a whole, resulting in public offenses punished to deter crime and yielding a verdict of guilty or innocent.

Civil Law

A branch of law dealing with conduct that violates an individual's rights and is detrimental to that person, aiming to make the aggrieved party whole through monetary settlements.

Statutory Law

Laws developed and enacted by federal, state, and local governments.

Common Law

A system of law that develops based on judicial precedent and prior courtroom decisions on similar issues.

Negligence

The absence of due care or failure to act in a manner demonstrating the care and knowledge expected of a reasonably prudent individual in a similar situation.

Malpractice

Professional negligence occurring when a healthcare professional fails to meet an established legal duty, directly causing harm to a patient.

Duty

The established professional relationship that exists between a nurse and a patient.

Proximate Cause

A key legal element of malpractice establishing that the occurrence of patient harm depended directly on the nurse's breach of duty.

Plaintiff

The complaining party in a civil lawsuit who files a formal written complaint.

Defendant

The individual alleged to be legally liable or responsible for damages in a court case.

Complaint

A written legal document filed in court by the plaintiff that names the defendant, states the facts of the case, and outlines the sought damages.

Summons

A formal court order, typically served in person, notifying a defendant of a legal action brought against them.

Discovery

The pretrial legal process allowing both sides of a lawsuit to examine documents and interview witnesses.

Deposition

Out-of-court witness testimony given under oath that is documented for use in legal proceedings.

Interrogatory

A formal set of written questions submitted during pretrial discovery that must be answered in writing under oath.

Abandonment of Care

The wrongful and premature termination of providing required professional care to a patient.

Assault

An intentional threat to cause bodily harm to another person without requiring actual physical contact.

Battery

The unlawful or unauthorized touching of another person without their informed consent.

Libel

A malicious or untrue written statement published about another person that harms their reputation.

Slander

Malicious or untrue spoken statements made about another person that damage their reputation.

Tort

A civil wrong committed against a person or property, encompassing actions such as negligence, assault, battery, and invasion of privacy.

Advocate

An individual who defends, pleads, or safeguards the interests and cause of another person.

Standards of Care

Universal guidelines deriving from federal and state laws, rules, and institutional policies that define what acts are obligatory or prohibited in nursing practice.

Nurse Practice Acts

State statutes enacted by legislatures that formally define and limit the legal scope of nursing practice within that specific jurisdiction.

Patient's Bill of Rights

A document developed by the American Hospital Association in 1972 to promote public understanding of consumer rights and responsibilities in healthcare.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

Federal legislation passed in 1996 establishing rules, limits, and security standards regarding the privacy and wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information.

Informed Consent

Full disclosure of pertinent treatment facts provided to a competent patient to enable an intelligent decision prior to undergoing an invasive procedure.

Incident Report

An administrative form filled out to document the factual details of an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence, which is kept separate from the patient's medical record.

Claims-Made Policy

An insurance policy that covers liability claims only if the policy is currently active at the exact time the bodily injury or property damage occurs.

Occurrence-Basis Policy

An insurance policy providing protection against claims as long as the policy was in force when the incident occurred, regardless of when the lawsuit is filed.

Living Will

A legal advance directive detailing a client's explicit wishes regarding life-sustaining medical treatments in the event of terminal illness or incapacitation.

Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care

A legal advance directive designating a specific agent or health care proxy to make medical decisions on behalf of a patient who lacks decisional capacity.

Autonomy

The ethical principle that grants individuals the freedom of personal choice and independent decision-making regarding their care.

Beneficence

The ethical principle specifying a duty to take actions that promote the good and well-being of others.

Nonmaleficence

The core ethical obligation directing healthcare providers to do no harm to patients.

Justice

The ethical concept governing fairness, equality, and appropriateness in the distribution of healthcare resources.

Euthanasia

The practice where a physician or third party directly administers a lethal drug or action to end a patient's life.

Practitioner-Assisted Suicide (PAS)

A scenario where a clinician prescribes medication that the patient subsequently self-administers to deliberately end their own life.

Nursing Process

A systematic, dynamic problem-solving framework consisting of assessment, data analysis/nursing diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation used to manage patient care.

Clinical Judgment

The observed outcome of critical thinking and decision-making that applies nursing knowledge to observe, analyze, prioritize, and implement safe client care.

Assessment

The continuous, systematic dynamic collection and analysis of holistic patient data, forming the first step of delivering nursing care.

Focused Assessment

A targeted appraisal conducted when a patient is critically ill, disoriented, or needing immediate evaluation regarding a specific health problem.

Subjective Data

Information gathered during assessment that reflects what the patient verbally states or describes regarding their condition.

Objective Data

Factual, measurable, and directly observable clinical findings obtained through physical examinations, vital sign measurements, and laboratory diagnostic reports.

Data Clustering

The clinical practice of grouping related cues together to identify specific physiological or psychological patient problems.

Medical Diagnosis

The legal identification of a specific disease, pathophysiological condition, or disorder conducted by a licensed physician or independent provider.

Nursing Diagnosis

A clinical judgment that addresses human responses to health problems, life processes, and underlying medical conditions.

SMART Criteria

A system used to design clinical outcome goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-oriented, and Time-bound.

Physician-Prescribed Interventions

Medical therapies and orders issued by a licensed physician that are executed by nurses, such as medication administration and diagnostic orders.

Nurse-Prescribed Interventions

Independent nursing actions that a licensed nurse is legally authorized to initiate without a physician's order.

Evidence-Based Practice (EBP)

A problem-solving healthcare approach combining external scientific research with internal clinical data, expert practitioner skills, and patient preferences.

Managed Care

A structured healthcare system designed to deliver and coordinate specific clinical outcomes while managing financial costs within set time limits.

Case Management

A certified practice model where a designated healthcare provider oversees, coordinates, and evaluates the complete spectrum of services delivered to a patient.

Clinical Pathway

A multidisciplinary timeline scheduling clinical interventions, diagnostic tests, and daily goals over a defined timeframe for high-risk, high-cost cases.

Variance

A deviation occurring when a patient fails to achieve a projected clinical pathway outcome within the expected timeline.

Critical Thinking

Purposeful, logical thinking using a scientific knowledge base to make decisions, generate new ideas, and solve clinical problems.

Florence Nightingale

The pioneer recognized as the first nursing theorist, known as the 'Lady with the Lamp,' who established sanitary standards and founded a formal nursing school at Saint Thomas Hospital in London.

Dorothea Dix

A historical pioneer who campaigned relentlessly for the humane treatment and improved facility standards of mentally ill individuals.

Clara Barton

An American nursing figure celebrated for establishing and developing the American Red Cross.

Linda Richards

The first trained professional nurse in the United States, credited with establishing modern healthcare documentation systems.

Isabel Hampton Robb

An influential nurse leader who organized the first graded nursing school curriculum and co-founded the American Journal of Nursing.

Mary Eliza Mahoney

The first African-American professional nurse who worked to advocate for equal opportunities and increased representation of minority nurses.

Lillian D. Wald

A historic figure responsible for founding and advancing community-focused public health nursing.

Mary Breckenridge

A pioneer nurse midwife who established the Frontier Nursing Service to bring obstetric and health care to rural communities.

National Federation of Licensed Practical Nurses (NFLPN)

A professional association founded in 1949 by Lillian Kuster that restricts its official membership exclusively to LPNs and LVNs.

Health Care System

A complete network of providers, facilities, and agencies structured to deliver optimal healthcare across a specific population or region.

Wellness-Illness Continuum

A dynamic spectrum that represents an individual's constantly shifting position between optimum wellness and severe illness.

Holistic Health Care

A comprehensive healthcare philosophy considering the physical, psychological, emotional, social, and spiritual needs of the entire patient.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

A psychological human needs model organizing requirements into a pyramid ranging from basic physiological necessities up to self-actualization.