Devastating multi-million-dollar nuclear verdicts are on the rise in the healthcare industry, making it important for you as a nurse to understand your risks and how to help protect your career. These high-dollar jury awards, often defined as $10 million or more, have become increasingly common — and nurses are not exempt from the nuclear verdict trend.

Recent data illustrate just how quickly verdict severity is escalating. In 2023, 50% of medical malpractice nuclear verdicts exceeded $25 million and in 2024, the top 50 largest medical malpractice verdicts averaged $56 million, according to TransRe. One may assume these types of cases only target physicians, but the reality can look very different. In a 2024 malpractice case, for example, two nurses were found responsible for 80% of a $37 million nuclear verdict, while the physician was responsible for only 20%.

What’s Driving the Rise in Nuclear Verdicts?

There are a few factors contributing to this increase in nuclear verdicts in the nursing profession:

1. Economic and Industry Pressures

Economic and industry factors can make nurses more susceptible to nuclear verdicts. Staffing shortages, evolving care models, provider consolidation and private equity can all play a role.

2. Social and Tort Inflation

Social and tort inflation are reshaping risk and litigation, helping drive the nuclear verdict trend in healthcare.

These are some common tactics used to build the case for a nuclear verdict:

• Leveraging social media to amplify a story nationally
• Exploiting outdated defense tactics like focusing narrowly on simply defending good medicine and standard of care principles
• Taking advantage of changing jury demographics and priorities
• Seeking phantom damages, which are claims based on inflated billed rates for treatments

These tactics are designed to influence jurors’ emotions and expectations, often pushing verdicts into the nuclear range.

Practices to Help Protect Your Career

Nuclear verdicts highlight the level of risk nurses can encounter across care settings. Understanding these risks and adopting consistent risk management practices can help defend against a potential malpractice claim. With that, nurses should keep these five tips in mind to help protect the career they love:

1. Practice within the requirements of your state nurse practice act, in compliance with organizational policies and
2. procedures, and within the national standard of care.
3. Maintain basic clinical and specialty competencies by proactively obtaining the professional information, education, and training needed to remain current regarding nursing techniques, clinical practice, biologics, and equipment.
4. Document your patient care assessments, observations, communications and actions in an objective, timely, accurate, complete and appropriate manner.
5. Utilize the chain of command or the risk management or legal department regarding patient care or practice issues, if necessary.
6. Maintain files that can be helpful with respect to your character, such as letters of recommendation, performance evaluations, and continuing education certificates.

Why Individual Malpractice Insurance Matters

You may have some protection through your employer's insurance, but it is not recommended to rely entirely on employer-provided coverage, as it can have gaps. These policies are typically paid for by your employer, carry your employer’s name and ultimately prioritize your employer’s interests – not yours. As nuclear verdicts rise, having your own malpractice insurance can make a big difference. A policy that’s based on your role, responsibilities and professional history can help you protect your career and your personal assets.

This article is provided for general informational purposes only and is not intended to provide individualized business or legal advice.