Developmentally Disabled Adults: Nurse Must See That Helmet Is Worn, Assess Patient Who Falls

Developmentally Disabled Adults: Nurse Must See That Helmet Is Worn, Assess Patient Who Falls

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

July 1997

Quick Summary: It is the nurse’s responsibility to see that a resident who is supposed to wear a helmet when out of bed wears the helmet.

Nurses are the professional staff who have front-line responsibility for residents’ care in a center for developmentally disabled adults.

If a resident does fall, the nurse must carefully assess the resident and determine if emergency medical care is needed. COURT OF APPEAL OF LOUISIANA, 1997.

Medical and therapeutic directives in a developmental center serving retarded and disabled adults are formulated by the doctors and therapists. However, the nurses are the professional staff who must understand the residents’ day-to-day care needs and closely monitor each resident’s activities.

The Court of Appeal of Louisiana ruled in a recent case that the LPN on duty was at fault when an adult with epilepsy and substantial functional limitations fell. The nurse was not held responsible for the fall itself; that the resident could fall was to be expected and was largely unavoidable.

The court blamed the nurse because the resident was not wearing his protective helmet at the time. The nurse also did not correctly assess the extent of the resident’s head injuries from the fall, and should have sent him to the emergency room right away. Fincher vs. State Department of Health & Hospitals, 691 So. 2d 844 (La. App., 1997).