Evaluation of nursing students' training in medical law

Abstract

There is no co-ordinated focus on liabilities arising from nurses’ medical interventions in terms of occupational, administrative, civil legal andcriminal activities.However, theTurkishCriminalCode, theTurkishMedical Ethics Code of Practice, and guidelines for patients’ rights offer some framework for the relevant ethical principles and responsibilities of nurses. The aim of this study was to investigate the evaluation of nursing students’ training in their legal liabilities. The sample consisted of 309 students whowere taking a course entitled ‘Nurses’ legal liabilities under Turkish criminal and civil law arising from medical interventions’. Data were obtained by means of self-administered questionnaires and McNemar’s test was used to evaluate the answers. In conclusion, after their training, a great majority of the students demonstrated an improvement in terms of their percentage of correct answers relating to malpractice. This does not, however, mean that they will not face malpractice charges after graduating, but their increased awareness of the issue may encourage them to make more effort to reduce the risk ofmistakes. It is recommended that nursing faculty carry out studies into medicalmalpractice, that they focusmore on this subject in nursing education, and that all nursing schools review their curricula from the point of view of malpractice.