The  probate estates of two former hospital patients joined in a lawsuit against the same hospital alleging that negligent nursing care in the hospital caused the patients to develop bedsores.  In support of the lawsuit the patients’ families’ lawyers filed with the court a report prepared by a PhD-level registered nurse who outlined her opinions that the hospital’s nurses deviated from the standard of care in the care of these patients.

  In its defense the hospital did not question the nurse’s qualifications as an expert on the standard of care.  Instead, the hospital argued that the families’ nursing expert was not qualified to offer the necessary expert opinion linking the alleged deficiencies she found in the patients’ nursing care to the injuries they suffered.

  The Court of Appeals of Texas agreed with the hospital and dismissed the families’ lawsuit.  The cause of the onset and progression of a hospital patient’s positional skin lesions is a complex medical question with many possible contributing factors, one of which may or may not be the patient’s nurses’ care.  According to the Court, the prevailing view of the courts is that proof linking a nurse’s care of a patient to the onset or progression of bedsores must come from an expert opinion of a physician with the medical qualifications to render such an opinion.  Sampson v. Med. Ctr., 2018 WL 459414 (January 18, 2018).

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