Chapter 2 Flashcards
Define standard of care:
The care that should be provided for any level of training based on local laws, administrative orders, and guidelines and protocols established by the local EMS system.
Define duty in EMS:
The legal obligation to provide care.
Define ethics:
The study of the principles that define behavior as right, good, and proper.
Define values:
The personal beliefs that determine how a person actually behaves.
Define consent:
The legal term that means to give formal permission for something to happen.
Example: All EMS need a form of expressed consent or implied consent before you’re allowed to perform actions on them.
Define competence:
The quality of being adequately or well qualified to make decisions both physically and intellectually.
Example: patients should be able to know happened and what time, day or month it is.
Define expressed consent (also known as informed consent).
A competent adults informed decision to accept emergency care provided by an Emergency Medical Responder.
Define unresponsive:
Having no reaction to verbal or painful stimuli; previously referred to as unconscious.
Define implied consent
A legal position that assumes that an unresponsive or incompetent adult patient would consent to receiving emergency care if he could. This form of consent may also apply to other types of patients (like mentally ill).
Define emancipated minor:
A minor whose parents have entirely surrendered the right to the care, custody, and earnings (of the minor) and no longer are under any duty to support the minor.
Define criminal law:
The body of law dealing with crimes and punishment.
Define battery:
Unlawful physical contact.
Define advance directive:
A document that allows a patient to define in advance what his wishes are should he become incapacitated due to a medical illness or severe injury.
Define negligence:
A failure to provide the expected standard of care.
Define civil law (tort):
A body of law that addresses and provides remedies for civil wrongs not arising out of contractual obligations.
Define breach of duty:
A violation of the basic duty to act; failure to provide care to an acceptable standard.
Define duty to act:
A requirement that Emergency Medical Responders in the police and fire service, at least while on duty, must provide care according to their departments standard operating procedures.
Define Good Samaritan laws:
A series of state laws designed to protect certain care providers if they deliver the standard of care in good faith, to the level of their training, and to the best of their abilities.
Define abandonment:
To leave a sick or injured patient before equal or more highly trained personnel can assume responsibility for care.
Define Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA):
A law that dictates the extent to which protected health information can be shared.
Define Mandated Reporter:
Professionals who, in the ordinary course of their work, are required to report (or cause a report to be made) whenever financial, physical, sexual, or other types of abuse or neglect have been observed or are suspected.
