Nursing Documentation: Legal Aspects

Course overview

To know documentation principles and to apply them in daily practice are musts for every nurse. These are essential to protect patients and to safeguard every nurses license. Documentation is the foundational proof that care was provided to a patient. Requirements and methods of documenting are ever-changing amongst a variety of documentation modalities. Although nurses sometimes view documentation as a process that takes precious time away from direct patient care, it is one of the most critical skills they perform. In fact, appropriate and effective documentation is at the core of nursing practice. The goal of this course is to provide nurses working in acute care settings with information about the value of laws and standards governing nursing documentation, legal basics for appropriate documentation, and provide awareness of documentation practices that can lead to legal issues.