Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

May 1997

  Quick Summary: The hospital should have assessed and stabilized the patient more quickly so that he could be admitted for surgery.

   However, the family was unable to prove it was more likely than not that the surgery would have saved the patient.  APPELLATE COURT OF CONNECTICUT, 1997.

   A patient came to the emergency room with abdominal pain. He had been discharged from the same hospital a day earlier after a lengthy stay. A peritoneal catheter was removed just before his discharge from the hospital.

   A nurse assessed him in the ER. His vital signs were elevated. He was placed in an examining room to be seen by a physician. He went into cardiac arrest ninety minutes after arriving in the ER, still waiting for the physician in the examining room, and could not be resuscitated. The autopsy established massive intraperitoneal hemorrhage as the cause of death.

   According to the Appellate Court of Connecticut, it was wrong not to have quickly and correctly assessed this patient so that he would be taken immediately to surgery.

   However, the family’s negligence lawsuit against the hospital did not succeed. The family’s expert medical witness was not a surgeon, and was not qualified to testify that a successful surgical outcome would have been more likely than not. Wallace vs. Hospital, 688 A. 2d 352 (Conn. App., 1997).