Expert Testimony: Court Rejects Nurse As Expert on Medical Practice
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
January 1998
Quick Summary: A registered nurse's testimony as an expert witness is not good enough to contradict the other side's physician/internist. An expert witness must be a member of the pertinent medical specialty to be able to testify about the applicable standards of knowledge, skill and care.
In healthcare malpractice litigation, the plaintiff who filed the suit will not succeed with the suit without testimony from medical experts.
The plaintiff has to establish the standard of care, a breach of the standard of care, and a cause-and-effect connection between the breach and harm coming to the patient. COURT OF APPEAL OF LOUISIANA, 1997.
A patient came to the emergency room in distress. Lab tests were done. EKG showed a left bundle branch block. Her EKG and labs were not within normal limits, but were unchanged from a previous hospitalization. The physician sent her home.
An hour later she went to another hospital where she died from respiratory failure two days later.
Two physician internists testified for the defense that the standard of care for medical practice had not been violated. The Court of Appeal of Louisiana ruled a registered nurse’s testimony for the patient’s family contradicting the internists could not prove negligent medical practice, and the court dismissed the family’s lawsuit against the hospital.