Legal and Ethical Responsibilities in Healthcare

Vocabulary flashcards covering legal, ethical, and professional responsibilities in healthcare, including torts, contracts, patient rights, and advance directives.

Legal Responsibilities

Responsibilities that are authorized or based on law.

Law

A rule that must be followed and is enforced by federal, state, or local government.

Criminal Law

The body of law dealing with wrongs against a person, property, or society, involving crimes such as theft, illegal possession of drugs, and practicing without a license.

Civil Law

The body of law that deals with relationships between people, including torts and contracts.

Torts

Wrongful acts that do not involve a contract.

Malpractice

The failure of a professional to use the degree of skill and learning commonly expected in that individual's profession, resulting in injury, loss, or damage to the person receiving care.

Negligence

The failure to give care that is normally expected of a person in a particular position, resulting in injury to another person.

Assault

A threat or attempt to injure another person.

Battery

The unlawful touching of another person without consent.

Physical Invasion of Privacy

A violation of privacy that includes unnecessarily exposing an individual.

Informational Invasion of Privacy

A violation of privacy that involves revealing personal information about an individual without that person's consent.

Informed Consent

Permission granted voluntarily by a person of sound mind after a procedure and all associated risks have been explained in plain terms.

False Imprisonment

Restraining an individual or restricting an individual's freedom without authorization.

Abuse

Any care that results in physical harm, pain, or mental anguish.

Physical Abuse

Actions such as hitting, forcing people against their will, restraining movement, depriving people of food or water, or not providing physical care.

Verbal Abuse

Speaking harshly, swearing, shouting, using inappropriate words to describe a person's race or nationality, or writing threats or abusive statements.

Psychological Abuse

Threatening harm, denying rights, belittling, intimidating, ridiculing a person, or threatening to reveal information about the person.

Sexual Abuse

Any sexual touching or act, using sexual gestures, or suggesting sexual behavior even if the patient is willing or tries to initiate it.

Domestic Abuse

A situation where an intimate partner uses threatening, manipulative, aggressive, or violent behavior to maintain power and control over another person.

Defamation

False statements that either cause a person to be ridiculed or damage the person's reputation.

Slander

Defamation that occurs when false information is spoken.

Libel

Defamation that occurs when false information is written.

Contracts

Agreements between two or more parties consisting of three components: offer, acceptance, and consideration.

Implied Contracts

Contracts with obligations that are understood without verbally expressed terms.

Express Contracts

Contracts that are stated in distinct and clear language, either orally or in writing.

Legal Disability

A condition in which a person lacks the legal capacity to form a contract, such as minors, mentally incompetent individuals, persons under the influence of drugs, or semi-conscious/unconscious people.

Breach of Contract

The failure to perform a contract according to the terms of the agreement.

Principal

The employer who directs an agent and is held responsible and liable for compensating injuries caused by the agent.

Agent

An employee who acts on behalf of a principal.

Privileged Communications

All information given to healthcare personnel by a patient, which must be kept confidential and shared only with other members of the healthcare team.

Exempt Information

Information that is not protected by privileged communication rules and must be reported by law, including births, deaths, injuries caused by violence, drug abuse, communicable diseases, and STDs.

Privacy Rule

Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that went into effect in 2003 to provide federal protection for healthcare information across all states.

Ethics

A set of principles dealing with what is morally right or wrong, providing a standard of conduct or code of behavior.

Patients' Rights

Factors of care that patients can expect to receive, which all healthcare personnel are required to honor and respect.

Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987

Federal legislation guaranteeing specific rights to residents of long-term care facilities, requiring facilities to post a resident's bill of rights.

Advance Directives

Legal documents that allow individuals to state their desired and undesired medical treatments in the event of incapacitation.

Living Wills

Legal documents that allow individuals to state what measures should or should not be taken to prolong life when their conditions are terminal.

Do Not Resuscitate Order

An order frequently resulting from a living will specifying that CPR is not to be performed when a patient stops breathing.

Durable Power of Attorney

A document that permits an individual to appoint another person to make decisions regarding healthcare if the principal becomes unable to make those decisions.

Patient Self Determination Act

A federal law mandating that any healthcare facility receiving federal funds must provide patients with information regarding advance directives and assist them in preparing them.

Liability Insurance

Insurance that provides additional financial and legal protection to healthcare professionals in case of legal action.