Nurses Under Fire: The Stress of Medical Malpractice

Just because nurses are sued less often than doctors doesn't mean that their actions aren't a focus of a large number of medical malpractice lawsuits. Whether they are defendants or not, nurses are often crucial to the defense and subject to the same stress as the physicians they work with. A condition known as medical malpractice stress syndrome (MMSS) is increasingly being recognized as affecting medical professionals who are subjected to litigation.

According to a 2019 report by CRICO, the risk management arm of Harvard's medical facilities, nursing was a "primary service" in 34% of cases with a high-severity injury and in 44% of cases that were closed with a payment. And even though nurses were named as defendants only 14% of the time, likely because many nurses don't have their own personal malpractice coverage, their hospitals or facilities were sued in most of these cases — making the nurses important witnesses for the defense