Patient Falls From Bed: Nurse Ruled Not At Fault

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Patient Falls From Bed: Nurse Ruled Not At Fault

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

Quick Summary: To comply with the legal standard of care, a registered nurse is required to conduct a nursing assessment which should include an on-going assessment of the patient’s mental condition. MICHIGAN COURT OF APPEALS, 1995.

An eighty-seven-year old woman fell from her hospital bed and broke her hip. She had been taken to the emergency room by her daughter for a severe headache and sudden blindness.

The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled, because the patient did not recall how she fell from her bed, and because there were no witnesses to the fall, her case against the hospital would have to depend on circumstantial evidence. The circumstantial evidence would have to show a cause-and-effect link between the alleged negligence of the patient’s nurse and the harm patient suffered because she fell from bed.

"To be adequate, a plaintiff’s circumstantial proof must facilitate reasonable inferences of causation, not mere speculation," according to the court’s ruling. The expert witness called to testify for the patient, a registered nurse, stated that if the patient’s condition had been adequately evaluated, the evaluation might have revealed a need for a nursing intervention, and that might have prevented the patient’s injury

However, the court said it was not likely that the negligence of the nurse who evaluated and charted this patient’s condition was the cause of her fall. The court called it "pure speculation" to attribute the patient’s fall to a failure by the nurse to evaluate and chart the patient’s condition. Garabedian vs. Hospital, 528 N.W. 2d 809 (Mich. App., 1995).