Chapter 2 Key Terms

Battery

A complex legal term referring to the intentional touching of another person without consent and/or bearing or carrying threatened physical harm. Battery always includes an assault and is therefore commonly used with the term assault and battery.

Informed Consent

A complex legal term; basically, it refers to voluntary permission by a patient to allow touching, examination, and/or treatment by health care workers after the patient has been given information about the procedures and potential risks and consequences. It allows patients to decide to what may be performed on or done to their bodies.

Litigation Process

A legal action to determine a decision in court. Many malpractice cases are negotiated and settled out of court.

Malpractice

A legal term referring to improper or unskillful care of a patient by a member of the health care team, or any professional misconduct, unreasonable lack of skill, or infidelity in professional or judiciary duties; often described as "professional negligence ".

Negligence

A legal term referring to the failure to act or perform duties according to the standards of the profession.

Assault

A legal term referring to the unjustifiable attempt to touch another person or the threat to do so in circumstances that cause the other person to believe that it will be carried out, or to cause fear. An assault may be permissible if proper consent has been given (e.g. consern to obtain a blood sample.)

Liable

A legal term that refers to a legal obligation when damage occurs.

Plaintiff

A person who brings a case against another in a court of law.

Medical Records

Definitive documents, paper or electronic medical record's (EMR) that contain a chronological log of a patients care. It must include any information that is clinically significant or relevant to the patients care.

Clinical Improvement Amendments (CLIA)

Federal guidelines that regulate all clinical laboratories across the United States. Regulations apply to any site that tests human specimens, including small PoLs, or screening tests done at the patients bedside.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

Federal law (1996) expanded in 2000 to protect security, privacy, and confidentiality of personal health information.

Defendant

Individual (e.g. a health care worker), against whom a legal action (civil or criminal) or lawsuit is filed.

Implied Consent

Patient agreement

Patients Confidentiality

See confidentiality- The protected right of the patient and duty of health care workers not to disclose any information acquired to directly involved with the care of the patient.

Ethics

the branch of philosophy that deals with issues of right and wrong in human actions.