Journal List > Korean J Leg Med > v.43(4) > 1138570

Kim and Kim: Analysis of Legal Liability in Medical Accident due to Nursing Practice through Precedents

Abstract

These days, medical practice tends to be highly specialized and divided into qualified medical personnel, including nurses. Recent amendments of medical law show the change of the nurse's role in medical practice. Traditionally, nursing has been an aid work to doctor's practices and is one of the core parts of medical practices. Nurses are a skilled occupational group and individuals are trained and licensed as professionals during their educational courses under government supervision. Because all of the nursing practices cannot be directed or recognized by doctors and nurses are building their own expertise as healthcare providers, they can be held accountable in medical malpractice. In the past, from the perspective of legal responsibility, the nurse was only regarded as an assistant to a doctor; hence, a nurse's malpractice was concluded as a supervising doctor's liability. In the case of medical malpractice caused by nurses, the range of responsibility will be different, depending on the scope of the work carried out by nurse and whether it was supervised by a doctor. Therefore, further discussion is needed regarding the scope of independent nursing practice in order to distribute the legal liability. The authors reviewed ten cases of precedents of medical dispute, examined the events in-depth, and analyzed the court rulings determining the legal responsibility of a doctor or nurse.

Figures and Tables

Table 1

Analysis result of ruling for trial type, liability, and type of negligence

kjlm-43-119-i001

Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the 2018 University Research Fund, which was funded by Chosun University.

Notes

Conflicts of Interest Youn Shin Kim, a contributing editor of the Korean Journal of Legal Medicine, was not involved in the editorial evaluation or decision to publish this article. The remaining author has declared no conflicts of interest.

References

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ORCID iDs

Youn Shin Kim
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7407-0421

Tae Eun Kim
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8727-5108

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