University of Montana - Rehab Essentials
Educating Health Professionals in a Cost-Effective Way
Course Description
Legal and Ethical Issues for Pt's: Considerations In Risk Management
This course provides the physical therapist clinical doctoral learner with foundational information as to legal, ethical and administrative decision-making processes regarding issues often encountered in clinical practice.Full Course Description
This course provides the physical therapist clinical doctoral learner with foundational information as to legal, ethical and administrative decision-making processes regarding issues often encountered in clinical practice. Specific topics include PT malpractice, legal aspects of documentation, informed consent, sexual harassment and misconduct, professional responsibility, preparation for a deposition, criminal/contract/ education law issues, and liability risk management. There is also an optional lecture on managed care issues. Utilizing theoretical frameworks, case-based decision-making situations are presented. The applications presented emphasize the ethical/legal responsibilities of the physical therapist as an autonomous practitioner.
Objectives
By the end of the course the student will be able to:
- Compare the nature of health care and physical malpractice, civil and criminal litigation, and administrative processes.
- Explain the nature of risk management in health care and construct effective strategies to simultaneously optimize quality of patient care and minimize the risk of liability exposure in clinical practice.
- Prepare, if needed, to be an effective expert, fact witnesses and/or consultant in legal and/or administrative cases requiring physical therapist input.
- Demonstrate understanding of the legal and ethical bases for informed consent and be able to synthesize legal and ethical responsibilities and values into a formal patient informed consent policy statement in clinical physical therapy practice.
- Demonstrate understanding of the coprimary purposes for patient care documentation, and analyze their hierarchy of importance.
- Apply clinical risk management principles to special documentation problems, including: adverse incident reporting and reporting of abuse and other mandatory reports.
- Distinguish and resolve ethical and legal issues arising in practice using concrete construct and problem-solving methodology.
- Effectively resolve allegations of sexual harassment or misconduct arising in the work place.
- Debate or defend with professional and support colleagues in the work place those interpersonal behaviors that are: acceptable, precautionary, and unacceptable to the ordinary reasonable person.
- Explain the nature of health care business contractual relationships, and synthesize that understanding into an effective personal policy for employment-related contract management in their professional careers.
- Demonstrate understanding of the legal and practical aspects of supervision and delegation – especially as it relates to delegation of selected interventions to the licensed physical therapist assistant.