The Last Few Cases: Update on Canadian Perinatal Law

Presenter: Elaine Borg BNSc, RN, LLB, Legal Counsel, Canadian Nurses Protective Society, Ottawa ON

Presentation Outline/Description: This presentation, given by a lawyer from the Canadian Nurses Protective Society and a former obstetrics nurse, will primarily consist of recent Canadian legal decisions of interest and importance to perinatal nurses. The cases will be analyzed with an emphasis on what can be learned from them to improve patient outcomes but also legal outcomes for perinatal nurses. This insight will be supplemented by participants’ own questions since there will be time for discussion. Participants should leave the session confident they understand the most common legal proceedings and how the law sees them.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the elements of negligence, i.e., what the plaintiff must prove in a malpractice lawsuit.
• Understand how to work with a lawyer in one’s own defence if sued in negligence.
• Reaffirm one’s professional duty of confidentiality by learning about where one is placed in statutory laws protecting privacy of health information.

Elaine Borg, BNSc, RN, LLB, is Legal Counsel with the Canadian Nurses Protective Society. She received her undergraduate degree in nursing from Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario. She worked in the infant neurosurgery unit at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto prior to focusing on her main interest, obstetrics, which she practiced at Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto and The Ottawa Civic Hospital. Her interest in ethical decision-making led to a position on a hospital clinical ethics committee, and from there, to a career in law after graduating from University of Ottawa’s law school. Elaine is a member of the College of Nurses of Ontario, the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, and the Law Society of Ontario. She was on the working group that drafted the National Disclosure Guidelines published by the Canadian Patient Safety Institute. She was on the Advisory Council for Queen’s University’s Masters in Healthcare Quality.