Quick Summary: Correctional inmates are entitled to adequate medical care.
The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. An inmate can sue a nurse or other healthcare provider for a civil rights violation if the provider shows deliberate indifference to the inmate’s serious health condition.
However, this inmate would not let the nurses palpate his shoulder. They looked at the shoulder, saw no obvious evidence of dislocation, gave him Tylenol and put him on the list to be seen by the doctor.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, ILLINOIS, 1998.
Every inmate in a Federal, state or local correctional facility has the constitutional right to adequate medical care while in custody serving a criminal sentence or awaiting trial on criminal charges, according to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
An inmate can file a Federal civil rights lawsuit against a nurse or other healthcare professional, if the inmate has a serious health condition and the healthcare professional shows deliberate indifference to the inmate’s medical needs.
Nevertheless, in a recent case the court ruled two nurses actions were completely proper. The court dismissed an inmate’s civil lawsuit against them and a physician and the corporation that provided contract inmate health services in a county jail.
It started when the inmate was handcuffed in jail by jail guards for transport to another county for a court appearance. The wide sweeping motion used to draw his hands behind his back from the top of his head, he claimed, dislocated his shoulder.
The court assumed for the sake of argument that a dislocated shoulder is a serious medical condition that would require immediate assessment by a nurse or other licensed healthcare professional in a correctional setting.
However, the court could find no fault with the day-shift and afternoon-shift nurses on duty in the jail infirmary for how they handled the inmate’s complaints. He would not let either nurse palpate the shoulder. There was no obvious external visual evidence of dislocation. From the nurses documentation it appeared the inmate was holding his shoulder forward and to the right, which the court believed was not consistent with a dislocation.
Even if the shoulder were dislocated, the nurses believed, as long as the patient’s pain was managed, it was medically acceptable to wait up to twenty-four hours to correct the problem, so he could see the physician early the next morning. The next morning he did not let the physician palpate or x-ray the shoulder. There never was any confirmation for the dislocation.
The afternoon-shift nurse did let the inmate stay in the jail infirmary for observation over night.
In general, the court said an inadvertent lapse in judgment is not a violation of an inmate’s constitutional rights.
To be guilty of violating an inmates constitutional right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, the court said a correctional healthcare provider must know that an inmate has a serious medical condition and must intentionally disregard the inmate’s medical needs with the express intention of inflicting unnecessary pain and suffering upon the inmate.
A negligent deviation from professional nursing or medical standards of care can give an inmate grounds to sue for malpractice, just like any other patient.
However, there must be intentional disregard of an inmates rights for an inmate to have grounds for a civil rights lawsuit, the court ruled. Higgins v. Medical, 8 F. Supp. 2d 821 (N.D. Ill., 1998).