Professional Liability Insurance
Travel Nursing

Why Travel Nurses Need Professional Liability Insurance

Travel nursing jobs offer freedom, flexibility and variety that staff nurses usually don’t get to experience. However, with these positives comes the potential risk of complaints and lawsuits. While these might not be as common for nurses as they are for doctors, they do happen. No nurse is perfect, and no matter how careful you are, there may be opportunities in which a patient, their family or the facility can take legal action against you. While staff and travel nurses both have the potential to be sued, travel nurses often face a higher risk of litigious action.

With lots of conflicting information about the correct insurance to purchase as a travel nurse, you may be confused about whether you need your own policy. Keep reading to learn more about what nurse liability insurance is, what can go wrong as a travel nurse and whether you need your own insurance policy to cover your work and protect your career.

What Risks Do Travel Nurses Face?

Traveling nurses enjoy much greater flexibility as they travel from state to state and from one facility to the next on temporary assignments. However, the transient nature of travel nursing poses certain risks that staff nurses might not encounter, at least not to the same extent. Let’s start by exploring some risks travel nurses might encounter while on assignments.

Making Mistakes

Once assigned to a new hospital or clinic, you need time to learn its policies, staff and layouts. However, you don’t always have this luxury, as facilities expect travel nurses to hit the ground running and often don’t provide sufficient orientation. Unfamiliarity with new surroundings may lead travel nurses to make more mistakes than staff nurses accustomed to the environment.

Blame Game 

When something goes wrong with a patient’s treatment, monitoring or medication administration, the patient or their family might blame the “new” nurse. No matter how long you’ve been a nurse, if you’ve only been at the facility a few weeks, you’re probably still considered new and an easy target. Because your co-workers don’t know you well, they also may doubt your abilities, even if you’ve been practicing for years, and cast blame that may not be fair or accurate.

Facility Complaints

In certain situations, a healthcare facility may file a complaint against a nurse, and they may do so quicker against a nurse that’s not part of its staff. If a patient complains to the hospital about a nurse, it could file a grievance against you directly. Although most staffing agencies provide professional liability insurance for their travelers, you may not know what these policies cover exactly. You risk needing to cover part or all of your legal costs if a hospital files a grievance against you if you haven’t ensured that your agency’s policy includes these contingencies.

Policy Changes

Knowing and understanding how policies and rules vary between hospitals and states is challenging as a travel nurse. If you don’t carefully read the healthcare facility’s policies and the state’s Nurse Practice Act, you risk doing something that might be okay in one place but not another. Certain procedures may not only be different but also be prohibited and could lead to legal issues.

Getting License(s) Revoked

Losing your license is a real possibility when complaints turn to legal liability. If you violate the Nurse Practice Act in a state you’re temporarily working in, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) may step in and take action against you. Although any nurse may have their license revoked under certain circumstances, it’s another area where the risk might be higher for travel nurses less familiar with local rules and regulations. You can also lose your license over non-work-related incidents. Travel nurses often hold multiple licenses, and since nursing boards usually communicate with one another, you risk losing more than one license.

Out-of-Date Contact Information

As you’re constantly on the go, you may not always keep your mailing address updated with the nursing board in your home state. If something happens and someone files a complaint against you, even if you have coverage in place, attorneys may deal with it without you if they can’t get in touch with you.

What Is Professional Liability Insurance?

Also known as malpractice insurance, professional liability insurance covers the cost of legal fees if someone takes you to court for malpractice. Without it, you’d have to foot the cost of all your legal fees if you get sued. Malpractice suits can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, depending on the situation.

A professional liability insurance policy may cover:

  • Legal and defense costs
  • Loss of earnings
  • Settlement costs

Policies offer varying levels of coverage and work in different ways. For example, you usually have a “limit of liability,” which is the total amount the policy covers in a lawsuit. The insurer could split the policy into “aggregate” and “per claims” limits. For example, your policy’s limit of liability could be $250,000 per claim with a $2,00,000 aggregate. The definitions of these terms are:

  • Aggregate limit: The total amount your insurer covers for all claims made within your insurance period, often 12 months.
  • Per claim limit: The total amount your insurance covers for each individual insurance claim during the coverage period.

There are also restrictions on when you receive coverage for a claim. Your policy may be “occurrence” or “claims-made” based. These terms mean:

  • Occurrence: You must have had an active insurance policy when you did the work being complained about in the lawsuit. 
  • Claims-made: You must have had active coverage in place both when the incident occurred and someone makes a claim. Sometimes, it can be months or years after the fact before a claim is made.

Why Do You Need Nurse Liability Insurance?

Professional liability insurance

You may have heard differing opinions regarding whether you should have your own policy or rely on employer coverage. Some recruiters may even suggest not worrying about taking out your own insurance policy. Numerous myths floating around could also cause uncertainty over the issue. Even the most experienced travel nurses can make mistakes that lead to a complaint. The American Nurses Association recommends that all nurses have individual professional liability insurance policies. Here are several reasons why it’s wise to do so.

Gaps in Agency Insurance Coverage

Travel staff agencies often provide insurance coverage because many healthcare facilities require them to cover the travel nurses sent to them on assignments. However, you might take extended periods off between contracts when the agency’s policy likely doesn’t protect you. Because it can take months or even years before someone makes a complaint against you, the policy an agency had for you while you were working may no longer be active. Gaps in coverage can be especially concerning if the policy was claims-made based. You can avoid gaps by having your own continuous policy whether you’re actively working or not.

It’s Risky to Rely on Employer’s Policy

Relying solely on your agency’s liability insurance is extremely risky. Like a healthcare facility’s policy, a travel nurse agency’s policies typically protect the agency first and the nurse second. Employer policies also only cover you while you’re at work, and there are incidents outside the workplace that can still jeopardize your license and career.

Furthermore, employer policies generally won’t provide protection if a state Board of Nursing (BON) investigates you. You should never take accusations of professional misconduct lightly, even if you’re sure you’ve done nothing wrong. Having your own policy ensures you have someone solely on your side working to protect your license and right to practice as a nurse.

To Protect Your License

You need your nursing license to work as a travel nurse, period. Without it, your career is over. License protection coverage is generally available on malpractice insurance policies and often isn’t included in an employer’s policy. It could help protect your license if a state BON is investigating you and your license is at stake. License protection insurance provides expert advice from an attorney, so you’re never left unprepared to answer questions and potentially find yourself vulnerable to being labeled as culpable.

It’s Inexpensive

Although professional liability insurance policies utilize several factors to determine the premium, coverage is relatively inexpensive, especially compared to the potential costs of a lawsuit. For a reasonable annual fee, you provide yourself with guaranteed protection. Plus, you never share policy limits with other employees because the policy is yours alone.

Are Travel Nurses Covered Under the Facility’s Insurance?

Although a healthcare facility is responsible for everything that occurs inside its walls, it doesn’t mean travel nurses enjoy the same coverage under the facility’s liability insurance as staff nurses, since they’re technically not employees. Generally, travel nurses have coverage under their staffing agency’s policy. The healthcare facility may even require the agency to provide coverage and/or travel nurses to have their own policies. If a facility does cover a travel nurse during a lawsuit, it may then sue the nurse to recoup legal fees.

Are Travel Nurses Covered Under Employer’s Insurance?

Travel nurses are employees of the travel staff agency, which may cover them under its professional liability policy. Most agencies do cover all their travel clinicians, and most healthcare facilities require agencies to provide proof of insurance as part of the credentialing requirements for travel nurses under contract. However, coverage isn’t guaranteed, so make sure you ask and read the policy to see what’s covered precisely.

Even if you’re covered, remember, insurance policies have limits. If you’re sharing this limit with multiple employees, there might not be enough to cover a complaint brought against you when the time comes.

Liability Insurance Protects You

In the current litigious environment, many travel nurses may be reconsidering whether to rely solely on their travel agency to provide liability coverage or if they should get their own policy. An insurance company’s client is your employer, not you, and brokering a good deal for your employer may not include a favorable outcome for you. Liability insurance protects your license, financial well-being and possibly even your freedom. It’s critical to weigh all the pros and cons, possible outcomes of situations that could turn legal and overall risk versus reward regarding the cost to ensure you have the coverage you need should the need ever arise.

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