Labor/Delivery: Nurse Must Report Signs Unambiguously To Physician, Court Says

Labor/Delivery: Nurse Must Report Signs Unambiguously To Physician, Court Says

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

February 1998

Quick Summary: A nurse must take responsibility to communicate in a way that will be understood by the physician.

When the physician phoned about the patient, the nurse reported there was "no change" in the patient’s condition.

The physician apparently thought this meant the leakage of amniotic fluid which had seemed to stop was still stopped.

Or did it mean the patient still had the fluid leakage she had when she came in?

Or had the nurse simply neglected to check the patient before reporting to the physician? APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS, 1997.

The patient was improperly sent home from the hospital under her physician’s belief that a rupture of her membranes had sealed over and that labor contractions had subsided.

There were several possibilities how miscommunication might have happened between the labor and delivery nurse on duty and the physician, but any one of them was enough to make the hospital liable, in the opinion of the Appellate Court of Illinois. A nurse has the legal responsibility, according to the court, to check the patient’s physical signs accurately and to report those signs to the physician in a manner that will be understood correctly. Wingo vs. Hospital, 686 N.E. 2d 722 (Ill. App., 1997).