The Canadian Association of Medical and Surgical Nurses would like to thank Connect Medical Legal Experts for providing CAMSN members with access to all four articles in a series exploring the most common nursing negligence issues in Canada. These articles can also be found under the Education Corner tab.

1 – Miscommunication the Leading Cause of Malpractice Lawsuits Against Nurses
2 – Legal Issues in Nursing; Assessment
3 – Legal Issues in Nursing; Medication Errors
4 – Legal Issues in Nursing; Infection Control and Equipment Errors

Chris Rokosh is a popular speaker on medical legal issues in nursing across Canada and the U.S. She is an RN and founder of Connect Medical Legal Experts, a Calgary-based leader in Expert Witness Services, with a database of hundreds of medical, nursing and cost of future care experts across the country.

Connect Medical Legal Experts
Since 2001, Connect Medical Legal Experts has been a bridge between the Medical and Legal worlds, providing healthcare expertise to lawyers and medical legal education to healthcare.
Our mission is to openly share medical legal knowledge and expertise, with a goal of improving healthcare and legal outcomes.
Our vision is to positively impact healthcare by creating mutually beneficial relationships between healthcare and law. This vision drives us to serve tirelessly, with great passion and unscrupulous integrity.

A Legal Nurse Consultant (LNC) is a licensed, registered nurse who performs a critical analysis of clinical and administrative nursing practice, healthcare facts and issues and their outcomes for the legal and healthcare professions. For more information on LNC or if you’re interested in getting involved with Connect Medical Legal Experts, visit https://www.connectmlx.com/contact-us

Attached is CAMSN’s February Newsletter.

CAMSN Newsletter Feb 2018

In honour of National Nursing Week (May 8^th-14^th), learn about the history of the Nursing Sisters in Canada. Battle nursing, a concept begun by Florence Nightingale, found its way to Canada in 1885.

“This tribute to Canadian Nursing Sisters tells of these brave and dedicated women. Their story is one of humour as well as anguish. It is a story of unyielding women who braved all the hardships of war to do their duty and serve their patients, and of those who nursed the casualties left in the wake of war.”

Enjoy the rest of this publication, retrieved from Veterans Affairs Canada’s Remembrance Series, at:
www.veterans.gc.ca/public/pages/remembrance/those-who-served/women-and-war/nursing-sisters/nursingsister_eng.pdf

There are over 45,000 medical-surgical Registered Nurses in Canada. Medical-surgical nurses form the largest single group of nursing professionals in health care and make up over 18% of all RNs working in Canada!
While nationally med-surg numbers are quite notable, CAMSN has just over 800 members. This leads us to believe that a lot of medical-surgical nurses simply don’t know about CAMSN.

Have you told your friends and colleagues about the Canadian Association of Medical and Surgical Nurses?

Help us increase our membership numbers. It’s FREE and joining is easy! Just have your friends and colleagues fill out the registration form located in the “Membership” tab and e-mail it to Crystal Côté, our secretary, at crystal.cote@mail.mcgill.ca.

Top 10 Reasons to be a CAMSN Member:

1. Stay up-to-date with CAMSN activities
2. Receive quarterly newsletters
3. Connect with a community across Canada that shares a passion for medical-surgical nursing
4. Expand your knowledge and skills, share in best practices and remain current, connected and relevant
5. Access to CAMSN’s Standards of Practice
6. Demonstrate your commitment to competence in your specialty area
7. Opportunities to be featured or have your work featured in CAMSN’s quarterly newsletters
8. Discounted CAMSN conference registration fees
9. Access to archived newsletters and documentation from past conferences
10. Work collaboratively with the Canadian Nurses Association

The Canadian Nurses Association recently shared a Literature Review outlining the positive impact that certification has had on patient outcomes:

1. Mortality Rates & Failure to Rescue – Several studies found certified nurses were able to recognize and respond to a deteriorating patient quicker than non-certified nurses and that certification was associated with decreased mortality and failure to rescue rates (Cary, 2001; Martin, Arenas-Montoya & Barnetty, 2015; Kendall-Gallagher, Aiken, Sloane & Cimiotti, 201)
2. Infection Control – Lower rates of central line associated bloodstream infections associated with higher rates of certified nurses (Boyle et al, 2014; William, Lopez & Lewis, 2013)
3. Falls – Higher certification rates linked with lower total patient falls (Boltzet al, 2013; Kendall-Gallagher & Blegen (2009); Lange et al (2009)

Become part of the growing network of over 17,000 CNA-certified RNs across the country! Spring registration is currently open!! See the CNA Certification tab for more details.

At the 2016 CAMSN Conference, attendees had the honour of hearing from Dr. Qaiser Fahim MBBS, MHSc (Bioethics) on Patient-Directed Medical Assistance in Dying. Although his presentation was very informative, a number of questions were unable to be unanswered at that time as Bill C-14 was currently before the Senate.

After Bill C-14 was passed, a national task force, created by the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), began developing a guide to assist Registered Nurses and Nurse Practitioners in their roles and ethical obligations regarding medical assistance in dying. On January 23^rd, 2017, the CNA released its national nursing framework on medical assistance in dying (MAID).

Please see the following link for more information and access to the framework:
https://www.cna-aiic.ca/en/news-room/news-releases/2017/cna-leads-the-development-of-a-national-nursing-framework-on-medical-assistance-in-dying