1.4 Professional Ethics, Legal Torts & Impaired Practice
Differentiate intentional torts (assault, battery, false imprisonment) from unintentional torts (negligence, malpractice), and review mandatory impairment reporting.
🎯 Key NCLEX-RN® Clinical Takeaways
- Assault is an intentional threat causing reasonable apprehension of harmful contact; Battery is the actual unauthorized physical contact.
- Administering treatment against an alert competent client's refusal constitutes legal battery.
- Suspected colleague substance impairment must be reported immediately and confidentially to the nursing supervisor.
- Incident/variance reports are internal quality tools; never file, scan, or reference an incident report in the medical record.
Nursing practice is governed by civil, criminal, and administrative law. Torts are civil wrongs committed against an individual. Intentional torts include assault (threatening unconsented touch), battery (unauthorized touch or injection), false imprisonment (improper restraints), and invasion of privacy (HIPAA breaches).
Malpractice and negligence are unintentional torts requiring four legal elements: Duty, Breach of duty, Causation, and Harm/Damages.
When a nurse suspects a colleague is practicing while impaired by alcohol or drugs, the primary duty of client advocacy mandates immediate notification of the charge nurse or supervisor. Immediate intervention protects clients from preventable medication errors.
⚠️ Common Pearson VUE / NCLEX Traps
- Confronting an impaired nurse colleague in private rather than immediately notifying management to protect patient safety.
- Charting in the client progress notes that an 'incident report was filed' regarding a medication error.
Knowledge Checkpoint
During a busy night shift in the emergency department, a staff nurse notices that a colleague is stumbling, slurring speech, smells faintly of alcohol, and took 45 minutes to retrieve IV morphine from the automated dispensing cabinet. What is the immediate responsibility of the observing nurse?