subject: Obstetrician And Nurse Pay Out After Allowing Fetal Distress To Deteriorate And Unborn Child Dies [print this page] A number of difficulties can occur during a pregnancy. A complication that is extremely problematic and necessitates fast action is fetal distress. Thus, if fetal distress is spotted action must be taken without delay to prevent harm to the child. Below we consider the issue of liability in a published case involving a delay of approximately 2 hours in reacting to signs of fetal distress. We also take into account the resulting damages and the amount of the settlement.
A physician is told that his patient, an expectant mother, had been transported to a close by hospital after she had fallen. The expectant mother had gone through an ultrasound at the hospital in order to look for any harm to her baby and the ultrasound had been viewed as showing no injuries. The doctor agreed to meet the woman at a hospital where she was being transferred so as to have additional monitoring which the first hospital was not adequately outfitted to do. When at the second hospital a fetal heart rate monitor was connected to the expectant mother. The nurse at this hospital read the results as non-reassuring and revealing that the unborn baby was experiencing fetal distress. Given that the woman's doctor had agreed to see his patient there, the nurse considered that the proper course of action would be to do nothing until the obstetrician came, although she saw that the fetal distress was worsening.
In the next 2 hours the nurse kept postponing notifying a different physician that the baby was in fetal distress. It took the baby's heart rate reaching an alarmingly low level before the nurse ultimately notified one of the hospital doctors. This physician carried out an emergency C-section at once but discovered that the explanation for the fetal distress had been a placental abruption which had cut off the baby's oxygen supply.
The doctor was told the patient was being sent to the second hospital and was waiting for her physician to meet her there. However, instead of head to the hospital as he claimed he would do, the doctor went home. This would not have been a problem if the obstetrician had informed the staff at the second hospital of this choice. Thinking the physician was heading toward the hospital the nurse at the second hospital, who might normally have immediately notified a different physician of the fetal distress, a doctor who would never appear.
The baby was not breathing when he was born. The Apgar scores were 0 and 0. Resuscitation measures tried by the physician failed. The law firm that handled the claim was able to state that they obtained a settlement in the amount of $750,000 on behalf of the child's parents. This claim shows both (1) a physician's duty to follow up on the care of a patient when he agrees to do so and (2) a nurse's duty to make certain that a physician is notified immediately in the event that signs of fetal distress are observed.
by: Joseph Hernandez
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