Jury Give $4.4 Million For Child's Brain Damage After Nurse Trainee Fails To Diagnose Fetal Distress
No one is born a great physician or a great nurse
. They need to learn and then practice on actual patients. But people want a safety net should the doctors or nurse in training make a mistake. We further expect, however, that they will be carefully supervised and their work will be reviewed by a competent, experienced doctor or nurse. Patients do not normally think about this as they simply expect that the physician treating them is thoroughly competent. That safety net comes in the form of supervision by experienced doctors and nurses.Physicians and nurses in training should understand that there are limits to their knowledge and ability. The senior physicians and nurses who supervise those who are in training must also understand that those in training have not yet fully developed the knowledge and skills required to act on their own. If hey do not realizing this, the level of supervision will not be sufficient and result in errors. And with a lack of proper supervision these mistakes will not be caught and remedied resulting in devastating consequences.
In a published lawsuit an expectant mother, near full term, went to the hospital because she was experienced nausea and vomiting. On admission a nurse trainee examined the woman and checked her condition. The nurse trainee used a fetal heart rate monitor to check on the unborn baby. The strip showed that the womans unborn baby was in severe fetal distress. It was the same nurse trainee who, however, rather than an experienced doctor or nurse, who interpreted the tracings from the fetal heart rate monitor. The nurse trainee misread the strip as normal. Without any supervision by a doctor or a registered nurse, the nurse trainee took no action to safeguard the health of the baby and merely reassured her and discharged her.
The delivery took place three days after the visit to the hospitalafter 3 days. This was the scheduled delivery date. She had to go through therapy. She could not eat on her own and hence needed to be fed with a feeding tube. For 4 years she had to endure seizures. And she passed away from complications of the cerebral palsy. She was survived by her father and mother and by her 11 and 16 year old brothers. The law firm that represented the parents was able to report that they took the case to trial and achieved a verdict on behalf of the parents in the amount of $4,400,000.
This case shows how dangerous it is for a nurse trainee to diagnose patients without supervision from a physician or a registered supervising nurse. An experienced physician or nurse, even though also capable of making such a mistake, is much less likely to do so. An experienced physician or obstetrics nurses will probably have seen hundreds or even thousands of fetal heart rate monitor strips and honed the ability to determine when it indicates an abnormal pattern that requires immediate attention. And when a mistake by a nurse trainee is not caught by a supervising physician or nurse the result, as in the case reviewed above, can be devastating and may end in a malpractice lawsuit.
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