Q: In Michigan can I record a nurse or doc discussing my parent care if I told he/she I was recording this conversation?

A: In the current situation, health care facilities have great latitude to determine ways to best protect patients and staff. And in most cases, that starts with restricting visitors.

Is your parent able to communicate at the moment? If so, then it's them that would need to give or get consent to any recording of their health care. And even if your parent can communicate, if the health care facility says no visitors then that will still apply to you.

Now what if, God forbidden, your parent is unable to communicate at the moment? You will likely need to seek guardianship through your county probate court. Without a guardianship order, or a proper patient advocate designation, you are, legally, not in a position to say or do anything as far as your parent's care. Whatever the hospital has been allowing from you is essentially by grace at this point.

Last, recordings in general have far less value legally than what the average person believes. People often think real courts work like those court TV shows where someone just hits play on a tape recorder and the case is over. In real life, there is far more to it, and it's very possible for a recording to be deemed inadmissible as evidence - meaning a judge or jury may never get to hear it. And for the type of action you're contemplating - medical malpractice - the case would turn on expert witness testimony (e.g. a practicing doctor who reviews the medical file), not one what someone said on tape.