I really wish people would read my posts more carefully so I don't have to do a remedial lesson. FYI the law not only allows but requires medical practitioners to report all potential as well as actual cases of child abuse, and that goes for nurses. And they will do it at the drop of a pin. It covers their flanks legally and is virtually 100% riskfree for them.
As for finding mental incompetence, they don't have to FIND it, they need only report that they suspect it or consider it possible, and the victim is treated accordingly, being arrested, confined, restricted, manhandled, cuffed and/or hauled into court as the case may be. The benefit of the doubt goes to the medical practitioner/hospital/accuser who is presumed to be erring, if at all, on the side of caution.
Does that clear it up for you any?
ps: Again, not defending a Kennedy, particularly one who kicked a nurse who was almost certainly following reasonable procedures. (A non-Kennedy would have been in court the next morning, all scuffed and lacerated by hospital security.)
“I really wish people would read my posts more carefully so I don’t have to do a remedial lesson.”
Oh, come off it. In the context of this situation, which is what everyone is discussing, I read your comment to be defending the behavior of the nurses, by asserting that they had the authority to override Mr. Kennedy (and his child’s) civil rights.
Now, you seem to be asserting something else, and in fact your further explanation seems to prove my point. After all, the nurses did not do what you are claiming they should have done, which is report their concerns to the proper authorities, but instead took it upon themselves to act outside their authority and outside the law.
If you think that nurses can take it upon themselves to falsely imprison anyone, especially a NON-PATIENT, and then cover themselves by asserting mental incompetence after the fact, then offer up some evidence of that, because I don’t believe it.
Here’s a link to a legal resource discussing the issue of false imprisonment and hospitals:
http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/Books/aspen/Aspen-False.html
Here’s another one that is warning nursing professionals of the legal risks associated with these issues:
http://nursingassistants.net/legal-issues-for-cnas/
Nowhere in those resources do I see it asserted that simply thinking someone might not be mentally fit gives nurses a valid defense against those claims. Besides which, in this case, I don’t see the hospital staff ever claiming that Mr. Kennedy was incompetent, which they surely would have if they thought it would be such an airtight defense against liability, as you are asserting.