V Glossary
Administrative law: Law made by government agencies that have been granted the authority to pass rules and regulations. For example, each state’s Board of Nursing is an example of administrative law.
Advance directives: Written instruction, such as a living will or durable power of attorney for health care, recognized under state law, relating to the provision of health care when the individual is incapacitated.
Assault: Intentionally putting another person in reasonable apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact.[1]
Battery: Intentional causation of harmful or offensive contact with another’s person without that person’s consent.[2]
Capacity: A functional determination that an individual is or is not capable of making a medical decision within a given situation.
Civil law: Law focusing on the rights, responsibilities, and legal relationships between private citizens.
Commission: Doing something a reasonable nurse would not have done.[3]
Competence: In a legal sense, the ability of an individual to participate in legal proceedings. A judge decides if an individual is “competent” or “incompetent.”
Confidentiality: The right of an individual to have personal, identifiable medical information kept private.
Constitutional law: The rights, privileges, and responsibilities established by the U.S. Constitution. For example, the right to privacy is a right established by the constitution.
Contracts: Binding written, verbal, or implied agreements.
Crime: A type of behavior defined by Congress or state legislature as deserving of punishment.
Culture of safety: Culture that embraces error reporting by employees with the goal of identifying root causes of problems so they may be addressed to improve client safety.
Defamation of character: An act of making negative, malicious, and false remarks about another person to damage their reputation. Slander is spoken defamation and libel is written defamation.
Defendants: The parties named in a lawsuit.
Durable power of attorney for healthcare (DPOAHC): Person chosen to speak on one’s behalf if one becomes incapacitated.
Duty of reasonable care: Legal obligations nurses have to their clients to adhere to current standards of practice.
Ethics: A system of moral principles that a society uses to identify right from wrong.
False imprisonment: An act of restraining another person causing that person to be confined in a bounded area. Restraints can be physical, verbal, or chemical.
Felonies: Serious crimes that cause the perpetrator to be imprisoned for greater than one year.
Fraud: An act of deceiving an individual for personal gain.
Good Samaritan Law: State law providing protections against negligence claims to individuals who render aid to people experiencing medical emergencies outside of clinical environments.
Informed consent: The fundamental right of a client to accept or reject health care.
Infractions: Minor offenses, such as speeding tickets, that result in fines but not jail time.
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