Every day pregnant women place themselves and their unborn baby in the care of a doctor who will see them through labor and delivery. It can often take quite a bit of time after the patient is admitted to the hospital before the baby is born. During much of this time physicians tend to rely on the nurses and staff to monitor the woman's progress and to keep them informed of any complications that may arise.
This model makes the physician responsible for supervising the nurses and staff. It also makes the nurses and staff responsible for having the knowledge, training and experience to recognize signs of complications and for notifying the physician of any problems that arise. Unfortunately, nurses and staff sometimes fail to meet these requirements.
Consider the reported case in which a pregnant woman at full term began experiencing contractions while at home. On her way to a local hospital she began having unrelenting severe pain. When she arrived at the hospital she complained to the admitting nurse that she was in severe pain exclaiming that she felt something was wrong. She was taken to the Labor and Delivery unit but the nurse either did not register or ignored the woman's complaints and did not call the obstetrician, who had not yet arrived at the hospital, to inform him.
Instead the nurse acted as though this was a normal pregnancy. Precious time passed before she even began monitoring the fetal heart rate. Once she finally did she recognized that the unborn baby was experiencing fetal distress. At this point she did notify the obstetrician, who still was not in the hospital, by telephone. Another obstetrician on the unit took over and performed an emergency C-section.
The severe pain had been the caused by a placental abruption which led the unborn baby to suffer from a lack of oxygen resulting in severe brain injury. The child will be permanently disabled and requires full time care. The law firm that handled this case reported that they were able to achieve a recovery in the amount of $4.5 million from the hospital for the nursing staff's failure to recognize that the mother had experienced a placental abruption.
In this case the patient actually flagged the nurse her sense that something had gone wrong with the pregnancy. At this stage of the pregnancy severe persistent abdominal pain can be the result of a placental abruption. It is not clear why the nurse failed to put these together. Whether she ignored the patient's complaints, failed to hear them, did not have the right knowledge, training or experience to properly interpret the situation, or discounted the patient's complaints because a placental abruption is often (though not always) accompanied by visible vaginal bleeding, she missed signs of a dangerous complication.
The result, however, was a severe injury to the unborn baby resulting in a permanent disability. Due to the harm caused by the nurse's mistake the law firm that handled this matter was able to achieve a significant settlement that will hopefully ensure that the child has appropriate care for life.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney focused on complex injury cases, including birth injury medical malpractice cases. You can learn more about Placental Abruption and Medical Malpractice Cases at his website. www.birth-injury-malpractice-law.com.
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