Course Description

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.