subject: 4,400,000 Verdict In Case Of Nurse Trainee's Error Lead To Baby's Brain Injury [print this page] 4,400,000 Verdict In Case Of Nurse Trainee's Error Lead To Baby's Brain Injury
Doctors and nurses go through years of schooling and practice to build the required knowledge and skill base to help patients. People realize that new doctors and nurses need to practice on patients as a way to gain the necessary expertise. We expect that they will make mistakes along the way. If told otherwise most people would likely still let a physician or nurse in training care for them but would want the treatment to be supervised by an experienced physician or nurse.
During training new doctors and nurses have to recognize what they are able to do and what they are not. Those supervising them need to likewise understand the skills that the doctors and nurses in training have mastered and the limits of what can do on their own. If hey do not realizing this, the degree 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.
Recently a lawsuit was reported that described how a pregnant woman went to the hospital with complaints of nausea and vomiting. The pregnant woman was admitted to the hospital where a nurse in training was placed in charge of her. The nurse trainee read the results as normal, concluding that the baby was doing well and in no danger, even though they actually showed signs of severe fetal distress, a situation which requires immediate attention. The woman was discharged home not knowing that her baby was suffering from a lack of oxygen..
The baby was born 3 days later. While the child survived the delivery she was born with serious brain damage. She developed cerebral palsy. She had persistent seizures. The little girl spent the following 4 years of her life enduring seizures, having to go through therapy and had to be fed through a feeding tube as she could not eat on her own, before dying due to complications from her cerebral palsy. She was survived by her father and mother and by her two older brothers. One was 11 and one was 16. The law firm that handled this matter on behalf of the family reported that the case went to trial and that the jury awarded the parents $4.4 million.
The case analyzed above illustrates the need for close supervision of nurse trainees by a doctor or experienced nurse. A nurse trainee is much more likely to make an error that can cause a significant injury to a patient. But while an experienced labor and delivery nurse has interpreted hundreds or thousands of these strips a nurse trainee has only interpreted a few and is much more likely to make a mistake. And when an error by a nurse trainee is not caught by a supervising physician or nurse the result, as in the situation discussed above, can have tragic consequences and might lead to a malpractice lawsuit.
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