Does a nurse simply carry out a doctor’s orders, with no independent responsibility of their own? Many people assume so, and the assumption is wrong. Nurses hold professional obligations that exist alongside the physician’s, and those obligations carry their own standard of care. When a nurse fails to meet that standard and a patient is harmed, the nurse’s conduct, and often the employer’s, can be the basis of a claim.
This article explains nursing negligence in general terms and is not legal advice. Whether a specific situation supports a claim is a question for a licensed Georgia attorney.
The nursing standard of care
Georgia holds nurses to a standard specific to their professional role. The foundation is the same one that governs medical malpractice generally: under O.C.G.A. § 51-1-27, a person practicing a profession requiring special skill must exercise the reasonable degree of care and skill that profession accepts. For a nurse, that means the accepted standard of nursing practice, not the standard that applies to a physician.
This is an important distinction. The nursing standard is defined by what a reasonably careful nurse would do in the same situation, and it is established, like any professional standard in a malpractice case, through qualified expert testimony. A nursing expert explains what accepted practice required, and whether the defendant nurse fell short of it.
Independent nursing duties
Here is where the opening assumption breaks down. A nurse’s job is not limited to executing physician orders. Nursing practice includes obligations the nurse holds independently, regardless of what any doctor has directed.
Consider the difference through a hypothetical. A nurse follows a physician’s medication order exactly as written. Separately, that same nurse is responsible for monitoring the patient’s condition, recognizing signs of deterioration, and escalating concerns to a physician when the situation calls for it. Carrying out the order is one duty. Watching the patient and speaking up is another, and it belongs to the nurse independently. A nurse who observes a patient declining and fails to act, or fails to alert a physician, may breach the nursing standard even if every written order was followed.
Common types of nursing errors
Nursing errors tend to arise in the areas where the nurse’s independent judgment and vigilance matter most:
- Monitoring failures, where a change in the patient’s condition is not observed or not recognized in time
- Failure to escalate, where a concerning sign is noticed but not communicated to a physician
- Medication errors in the course of nursing care, such as administering the wrong dose or to the wrong patient
- Documentation failures, where the nursing record does not reflect care that the standard required
What connects these is that each involves a duty the nurse holds directly. The error is not simply a doctor’s mistake carried out by a nurse; it is a departure from what nursing practice itself demanded.
Employer responsibility
A nurse rarely practices alone. Most nurses are employed by a hospital, clinic, or other facility, and that employment relationship can extend responsibility beyond the individual nurse.
When a nurse commits negligence within the scope of their employment, the employer may bear responsibility for it through the legal relationship between employer and employee. This is why a nursing negligence claim often involves the facility as well as, or instead of, the individual nurse. The precise way responsibility attaches depends on the employment relationship and follows principles that reach across the broader law of institutional and vicarious responsibility, a subject with its own detailed rules.
Common questions
Can a nurse be sued individually, or only the hospital?
Both are possible depending on the circumstances. A nurse can bear individual responsibility for a departure from the nursing standard, and the employing facility may also bear responsibility for negligence committed within the scope of employment. Which parties are involved in a given claim depends on the facts and the employment relationship.
Does the nursing profession’s own written guidelines set the legal standard?
Professional guidelines, protocols, and institutional policies can be relevant evidence of what accepted nursing practice requires, but they are not automatically the same as the legal standard of care. The standard is established through qualified expert testimony, and while written guidelines may inform that testimony, how they bear on a specific case is a question the experts and the court address.
What if a nurse followed a physician’s order that turned out to be harmful?
Following an order does not necessarily resolve the question of the nurse’s own duties. Nursing practice includes independent responsibilities, such as recognizing when an order appears problematic and raising a concern. Whether those independent duties were met is a separate question from whether the order itself was appropriate.
The thread running through all of this is a single correction to a common belief: a nurse is a professional with independent duties, not merely a conduit for a physician’s instructions. Recognizing that is what makes it possible to see where nursing care can fall short and who may answer for it. Assessing a specific outcome is work for a Georgia attorney, but the starting point is understanding that the nurse’s duty was never merely to follow orders.