Settlement In Malpractice Claim

It is normal for pregnant women to place themselves and their unborn child in the hands of a physician to help them through childbirth. It can often take quite a bit of time after the patient is admitted to the hospital before the baby is born. During some part of this time doctors at times rely on the nurses and staff to keep an eye on the expectant mother's progress and to keep them advised of any complications that may arise.

The physician continues to be responsible for supervising the nurses and staff. Also, the nurses and staff are accountable for having the knowledge, training and experience to identify signs of difficulties and for notifying the doctor if they do arise. However, nurses and staff sometimes fail to satisfy these standards.

Consider the reported claim in which a pregnant woman at full term started experiencing contractions while at home and while heading to the local hospital the woman also started experiencing unrelenting severe pain. When she got to at the hospital the woman informed the nurse that she was having extreme pain alerting the nurse that she thought she had a complication to the pregnancy. She was transferred to the Labor and Delivery unit but the nurse either failed to understand or ignored her complaints and failed to call the doctor, who had not arrived at the hospital, to inform him.

Instead the nurse acted as though this was a typical pregnancy. Critical time went by before she even started checking the fetal heart rate. As soon as she at last did determine that the unborn baby was experiencing fetal distress. Now the nurse did call the obstetrician, who still had not come to the hospital, by telephone. Another obstetrician on the unit took over and performed an emergency C-section. The extreme pain was brought on by a placental abruption. The placental abruption cased the unborn child to experience a restricted supply of oxygen causing severe brain injury. The baby is disabled for life and needs 24/7 attention. The law firm that handled this claim documented that they were able to achieve a recovery in the amount of $4,500,000 from the hospital for the nursing staff’s failure to recognize that the pregnant woman had suffered a placental abruption.

In this lawsuit the patient actually signalled the nurse of her feeling that a complication had developed in the pregnancy. At this stage in the pregnancy severe continual abdominal pain can be due to a placental abruption. It is not known why the nurse did not connect these. Regardless if she ignored the woman's complaints, did not hear them, failed to have the appropriate knowledge, training or experience to properly understand the situation, or discounted the woman's complaints because a placental abruption is often (though not always) associated with observable vaginal bleeding, she overlooked signs of a dangerous complication.

The result, however, was a severe injury to the unborn baby producing a lifelong disability. Because of the injury from the nurse’s error the law firm that handled this matter reported that it was able to achieve a settlement designed to be enough so that the child has suitable care for life.

by: Joseph Hernandez
Source: articlecity.com