Early Discharge: Jury Finds For The Hospital.

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Early Discharge: Jury Finds For The Hospital.

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

The family’s medical expert, a toxicologist, testified that patients in general have a better chance of survival in the hospital than at home. However, he could not say that this patient would have survived were she not discharged but instead spent the night in the hospital. COURT OF APPEALS OF UTAH November 19, 2015

The patient underwent a day-surgery procedure involving esophagoscopy and bronchoscopy during which the physician removed mucus from her lungs. During her three-hour post-operative stay at the hospital the patient received 30 mg of morphine, 25 mg of Valium, 4 mg of Zofran, 2 mg of Dilaudid, 5 mg of Versed, 50 mg of fentanyl and, just before being wheeled out to her car, 12.5 mg of pro-methazine. At the time of her discharge several nurses observed that the patient was drowsy and unable to understand instructions and was acting drunk and incoherent.

The next day the patient was found dead in her bed at home at 4:00 a.m.

The family’s lawsuit alleged the nurses violated the standard of care by prematurely discharging a pharmaceutically inebriated same-day surgery patient, rather than seeing that she was admitted for overnight observation. The Court of Appeals of Utah accepted the jury’s verdict finding that the hospital’s nurses did violate the standard of care but that that violation did not cause the patient’s death. The coroner listed the cause of death as the combined effects of asthma, chronic bronchitis, drug toxicity and obesity. The family’s own expert toxicologist also speculated that a cardiac arrhythmia may have been a factor. Kerby v. Hospital, __ P. 3d __, 2015 WL 7352670 (Utah App., November 19, 2015).