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Nursing Negligence in the Hospital Emergency Department

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Jane Greenlaw
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Extract

The hospital emergency department- those who receive care there and those who provide it-has changed rapidly in recent years. The number of patients going to emergency departments is steadily increasing, and the care which they seek is not confined to traditional emergency care. More and more patients utilize the hospital emergency department for routine health problems, either as substitutes for personal health care providers or as replacements when their own providers are unavailable.

Physicians, nurses, and other health care providers in the hospital emergency department have changed from generalists to emergency care specialists. The rotating, on-call staff physician serving in a department with low priority is being replaced by the emergency medicine practitioner. Since 1980, the American Board of Emergency Medicine has been certifying physicians qualified in this new specialty, and the Emergency Department Nurses’ Association has been administering an examination for certification in emergency nursing.

Type
Nursing Law and Ethics
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , June 1984 , pp. 118 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1984

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References

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