Jury Give $4.4 Million For Infants Brain Injury After Nurse Trainee Does Not Diagnose Fetal Distr

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When treated by a physician or a nurse patients ordinarily assume that the physician

or nurse either (1) has the know-how and expertise to make a correct diagnosis of whatever they may have and order the best treatment or (2) is under the supervision of a more experienced doctor or nurse who does. According to the second possibility, the physician or nurse can gain experience while treating actual patients as long as their errors are noticed and rectified so that patients are not injured. After all, they go to school, study, and invest many, many hours learning practical knowledge through actual experience. But before they reach an appropriate level of experience they are likely to make mistakes. And returning to expectations people want to be confident that any such mistake will not hurt them.

Physicians and nurses in training have to understand that there are limits to their knowledge and skill. Those supervising them need to likewise recognize the skills that the physicians and nurses in training have perfected and the limits of what can do on their own. Without realizing this, the amount of supervision will be inadequate and can lead to errors. And with a lack of proper supervision these errors will not be caught and remedied resulting in devastating outcomes.

Look at a lawsuit that was reported which involved a near full-term pregnant woman. She was almost at full term. The woman went to the hospital following persistent nausea and vomiting. The expectant mother was admitted to the hospital and a nurse in training assumed responsibility for her care. It was the nurse trainee, instead of a registered nurse or a doctor who interpreted the strip from the fetal heart rate monitor. Interpreting the strip as normal and deciding that there was no danger to the unborn baby, the nurse trainee discharged the expectant mother. In reality, the babys oxygen supply was severely blocked and that the babys health was in grave risk..

The child was delivered three days following the hospital visit. She needed therapy. She was not able to eat by herself and so needed to be fed with a feeding tube. For 4 years she had to live with seizures. And she passed away from complications of the cerebral palsy. She was survived by her father and mother and by her 2 older brothers. One was eleven and the other was sixteen. The law firm that filed a lawsuit on their behalf reported that the case was tried and that the jury returned a verdict in favor of the parents for $4,400,000.
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This case shows what can happen if a doctor or nurse who is still in training is permitted to treat patients on their own before having completely developing the essential skills. An experienced doctor or nurse, while also capable of making such a mistake, is much less likely to do so. An experienced obstetrician or obstetrics nurses will likely have dealt with hundreds or even thousands of fetal heart rate monitor strips and honed the ability to determine when it shows an abnormal pattern that requires immediate attention. And when an error by a nurse trainee is not caught by a supervising physician or nurse the outcome, as in the case reviewed above, can be devastating and might end in a malpractice lawsuit.

by: Joseph Hernandez

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