There are some new trends in judgments concernin~; medical malpractice, which include emphasis on medical professionals explanation duty in order to materialize patients rights of self-determination. Now, patient is not a mere subject of medical and nursing care any more, but a subject participating in medical practice on equal teams with medical professionals.
Legal accountability is not limited to nurses in advanced practice: it is a recognized fact of life for every practicing nurse, whether she is an RN employed as a staff nurse in a hospital. a Certified Nurse-Midwife in independent practice or a patient~s home. Therefore, it is essential for nurses to be as familiar as possible with the legal guide-lines 1;hat govern their patient care responsibilities. However, there are only a few studies focused nn nursing negligence.
To define nurse´s civil liability in medical malpractice. it is necessary to identify both legal nursing behaviors and nurses due care in those nursing oehaviors. So this paper focused on nurse´s due care. especially in nursing malpractice.
To clarify nurses" due care. chapter II has focused on nursing behavior and the scope of nursing practice based on the medical law and health care related study results.
Chapter III deals with the content and scope of nurse"s due care. Generally, negligence is defined as not doing something which a resonable person. guided by those ordinary considerations which or dinarily regulate human affairs, would do, or doing something which a resonable and prudent man would not do. Nest. it describes how we can set the standard of due care in nursing practice. There is objective factors and subjective factors. And we also discuss about the limitation of due care in nursing practice.
Finally. chapter I~ deals with the case studies related to nursing negligence in the situation ofintravenous injection, post operation nursing care. blood transfusion. and patient nursing care.
The result of this paper is as follows. First, there are several cases dealing with nurse"s negligence in nursing practice, however, those cases didn"t judge nurses due care based on individual -specific standard but general-objective standard.
Second, there is a tendency to put an emphasis on. the principal of belief to distinguish who has the liability in the, case of medical malptactice among medical care team. So nurses shoud practice nursing care more actively to protect themselves and patients because there is an effort to form professional nurse system and the scope of nursing pr;~ctice will be deeper and bioadei.
Third. standard of care is a necessary element in establishing negligence. If a nurse is able to meet the standard of care, no breach will be found.
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