Chapter 7: Legal and Ethical Aspects of Sonography

Question 1

True or False: Sonographers are responsible for any harm that a patient may suffer as a result of their actions, even when working under the direction of a physician.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

We live in an era that emphasized the legal rights of who?

Answer 2

Patients and Healthcare Professionals

Question 3

What is Accountability?

Answer 3

The responsibility for events for which you may have to give a judicial explanation.

Question 4

What are laws?

Answer 4

The rules of conduct enforced by a controlling authority.

Question 5

What are medical laws?

Answer 5

Laws that deal with a particular sphere of human activity, namely the patient care.

Question 6

What is the goal of medical law?

Answer 6

To protect people, to correct inustice, and to compensate for injury.

Question 7

What are civil laws?

Answer 7

laws that affect the individual and not society as a whole.

Question 8

What are the different types of laws?

Answer 8

Statutory
Administrative
Common Law
Torts

Question 9

What is a Statutory law?

Answer 9

Laws enacted and enforced by federal or state legislators to help maintain the governmental rights to uphold social order and to protect the rights of individuals.

Question 10

What is a Administrative law?

Answer 10

Laws made by administrative agencies appointed by the president or governor.

Question 11

What is Common law?

Answer 11

A court-made law based on custom and usage.

Question 12

What is a tort?

Answer 12

A wrongful act, other than a breach of contract, for which the law provides a remedy.

Question 13

What are the two types of torts?

Answer 13

Intentional tort and Unintentional tort

Question 14

What is an intentional tort?

Answer 14

Assault, battery, invasion of privacy, and false imprisonment.
This is deliberately doing a wrongful act.

Question 15

What is an unintentional tort?

Answer 15

Negligence

Question 16

What is assault?

Answer 16

A threat to inflict physical injury on another person through force or violence

Question 17

What is battery?

Answer 17

the touching of another person, directly or with an object, in a harmful or offensive manner.

Question 18

What is invasion of privacy?

Answer 18

Intrusion on a person’s right to be left alone.

Question 19

What is confidentiality?

Answer 19

Keeping a patient’s medical records private unless a release of information is provided by the patient.

Question 20

What is a Policy and Procedure Manual?

Answer 20

Consistent guide to be followed under a given set of circumstances. A procedure is a sequence of steps for completing a given activity. May be available on paper or electronically.

Question 21

What is Autonomy?

Answer 21

The right to make our own decisions

Question 22

What is documentation?

Answer 22

An accurate and complete record of a patient’s care of an employee behavior.

Question 23

What is Negiligence?

Answer 23

An act or omission, failure to act, by a medical professional that deviates from the accepted medical standard of care, resulting in injury or death of the patient.

Question 24

What is Standard of Care?

Answer 24

Medical treatment guidelines.

Question 25

What is Medical Malpractice?

Answer 25

When a negligent act or omission by a medical professional results in harm to the patient.

Question 26

In a medical malpractice action, an injured patient must prove what four things?

Answer 26

duty, breach, harm, and causation.

Question 27

What is duty?

Answer 27

Refers to the standard of care that the medical professional is required to follow.

Question 28

What is breach?

Answer 28

The defendant’s failure to meet that standard of care

Question 29

What is harm?

Answer 29

refers to the injury sustained by the plaintiff

Question 30

What is causation?

Answer 30

Requires that the defendant’s failure to meet the standard of care was the actual cause of the plaintiff’s injury.

Question 31

What is res ipsa loquitur?

Answer 31

The thing speaks for itself

Question 32

What is informed consent?

Answer 32

A process by which a patient grants permission to have a procedure after hearing the benefits, risks, and alternative choices available to him or her.

Question 33

What are the two types of informed conset?

Answer 33

Express or Implied

Question 34

What is express consent?

Answer 34

given by the patient either in writing or verbally.

Question 35

What is implied consent?

Answer 35

neither written nor spoken by the patient, it is understood from the circumstances surrounding the procedure.

Question 36

What is liabiility?

Answer 36

A legal responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions.

Question 37

What three doctrines of liability is negligence based on?

Answer 37

Master-Servant
Ostensible Agency
Res Ispa Loquitur (The Thing Speaks for Itself)

Question 38

Under what theory can the sonographer’s employer be held liable for the sonographer’s negligence as long as the sonographer was acting within the scope of employment?

Answer 38

Respondeat superior (Let the master answer)