According to the court record in a recent case, a nurse gave the patient an injection of Demerol and Vistaril, per a physician’s orders, when the patient was seen in a hospital emergency room complaining of chest pains.

  For several weeks afterward, the patient had hip pain and a lump at the injection site. The patient claimed she was unable to work. A neurologist two months later formed a diagnosis of cutaneous gluteal neuropathy, for which physical therapy and a TENS unit were prescribed. The patient sued the emergency room nurse who gave the injection and her employer the hospital. The jury awarded over $90,000 in damages. The Court of Appeal of Louisiana upheld the verdict.

  The lawsuit alleged the nurse had injured the patient by administering the injection in a substandard manner. However, there was no direct proof in the trial about what actually caused the patient's injury.

  The nurse testified it would have been her routine practice to use a one-and-one-half inch needle, to insert it into the skin over the gluteal muscle at a ninety-degree angle deep into the muscle, then to aspirate the syringe for blood, then to inject the medication.

  Several physicians were also called to testify. Their testimony taken collectively established that the patient's injury could have been caused by a faulty subcutaneous rather than deep muscular injection of the drug Vistaril, or that a nerve could have been hit by the needle tip due to inaccurate location of the injection site.