Law Commons^™

Fostering Patient Safety: Importance Of Nursing Documentation, Shamsa Samani, Salma Amin Rattani

School of Nursing & Midwifery

Background: Nurses are professionally accountable for assessing and documenting patients’ vital signs. Nurses failing to fulfill this responsibility position their patients at risk. This paper presents two real-life cases pertaining to patients’ safety resulting in fatal outcomes, leading to the professional, legal, and ethical liability of nurses as the providers of patient care.
Objective: This paper focuses on the role of organizational culture in fostering patient safety specifically in monitoring and documentation of patients’ vital signs and early recognition of warning signs.
Methodology: A comprehensive literature search was conducted using various databases, examining the significance of vital signs monitoring and …

6th Annual Stonewall Lecture 2-2-2023, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Patenting Frankenstein's Monster: Exploring The Patentability Of Artificial Organ Systems And Methodologies, Jordana Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

The conception of Frankenstein’s monster bridges the ever-narrowing divide between man and machine. Long before Congress codified Section 33(a) of the America Invents Act (“AIA”), Mary Shelley’s vague description of the monster’s creation has left people wondering: what defines a human organism? Through an analysis of patent law and scientific progress in the development of artificial organ systems, this paper explores the boundaries of patentable subject matter in the United States and attempts to clarify Congress’s determination that “no patent may issue on a claim directed to or encompassing a human organism.” Though patent law should incentivize development of artificial …

Code Is Law, But Law Is Increasingly Determining The Ethics Of Code: A Comment, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

“Code is Law”, the aphorism Larry Lessig popularized, spoke to the importance of computer code as a central regulating force in the Internet age. That remains true, but today, overreaching laws are also increasingly subjugating important social and ethics questions raised by code to the domain of law. Those laws — like the CFAA and DMCA — need to be curtailed or their zealous enforcement reigned; they deter not only legitimate research but also important related social and ethics questions. But researchers must act too: to re-assert control over the social, legal, and ethical direction of their fields. Otherwise, law …

The Speakers’ Bureau System: A Form Of Peer Selling, Lynette Reid, Matthew Herder

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Physicians need to stay abreast of information about emerging drugs and devices, but the time pressures of clinical practice may limit their ability to do so independently. The companies that manufacture and sell these products have the resources and the motivation to “educate” physicians but cannot be expected to distinguish their marketing goals from physicians’ educational needs. Physicians’ professional associations and regulatory bodies, as well as medical journal publishers and editors, drug and device regulatory agencies, and academic medical institutions, have long debated their respective roles and responsibilities in ensuring the safety, efficacy, and probity of prescribing in light of …

Reviving The Federal Crime Of Gratuities, Sarah N. Welling

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The federal crime of gratuities prohibits people from giving gifts to federal public officials if the gift is tied to an official act. Both the donor and the donee are liable. The gratuities crime is dysfunctional in two main ways. It is overinclusive in that it covers conduct indistinguishable from bribery. It is underinclusive in that it does not cover conduct that is clearly dangerous: gifts to public officials because of their positions that are not tied to a particular official act.

This Article argues that Congress should extend the crime of gratuities to cover gifts because of an official’s …

Substitute Decision Making About Research: Identifying The Legally Authorized Representative In Four Canadian Provinces, Sheila Wildeman, Gina Bravo, Marie-France Dubois, Carole Cohen, Janice Graham, Karen Painter, Suzanne Bellemare

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

When an adult is legally incapable of deciding whether to participate in health research, who (if anyone) has the legal authority to make that decision? Furthermore, how well do Canadians with a stake in health research, such as older adults, informal caregivers of older persons with cognitive impairments, researchers in aging, and members of research ethics boards (“REBs”), understand the state of the law on this question? These two interrelated matters are addressed by our study.

We find that the laws of the four provinces we target are frequently unclear as to whether, or in what circumstances, a guardian, proxy …

Genetic Enhancements And Expectations, Kelly Sorensen

Philosophy and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Some argue that genetic enhancements and environmental enhancements are not importantly different: environmental enhancements such as private schools and chess lessons are simply the old-school way to have a designer baby. I argue that there is an important distinction between the two practices—a distinction that makes state restrictions on genetic enhancements more justifiable than state restrictions on environmental enhancements. The difference is that parents have no settled expectations about genetic enhancements.

Protecting Human Research Subjects: A Jurisdictional Analysis, Jennifer Llewellyn, Jocelyn Downie, Robert Holmes

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The most recent speech from the throne contained a pledge from the federal government to "work with provinces to implement a national system for the governance of research involving humans, including national research ethics and standards." This commitment signals a desire on the part of the federal government to address concerns about the inadequacies of the current governance of health research involving humans (RIH). To this end, Health Canada's Ethics Division is currently exploring the ways in which such a national governance system for RIH might be implemented. It is important for the federal government, as it moves toward making …

Recreation As An Ally For Environmental Protection, Gary Sprung

Outdoor Recreation: Promise and Peril in the New West (Summer Conference, June 8-10)

10 pages.

Contains references.

Representing The Water Client [Outline], David W. Robbins

Western Water Law in Transition (Summer Conference, June 3-5)

3 pages.

Agenda: Western Water Law In Transition, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Western Water Law in Transition (Summer Conference, June 3-5)

Conference organizers and/or faculty included University of Colorado School of Law professors James N. Corbridge, Jr., Lawrence J. MacDonnell, Richard B. Collins, David H. Getches and Charles F. Wilkinson.

The prior appropriation doctrine has governed the allocation and use of water in the western United States since the 1850s. The shifting nature of water demand is bringing about changes in the traditional legal system. This conference will consider the fundamental principles of the prior appropriation doctrine together with the important new developments in the law now underway throughout the West.