Labor & Delivery: Nurses Must Recognize Breech Presentation.
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
April 2019
The mother’s and her baby’s estate’s experts faulted the nurses for not conveying immediately to an ob/gyn what the paramedics and the mother told them and what they should have realized on their own as to the breech presentation of an imminent birth.
COURT OF APPEALS OF TEXAS March 7, 2019The mother’s obstetrician advised her at her last prenatal visit at thirty-four weeks that her fetus was not in a normal presentation and that she would likely need a cesarean when the time came. Eleven days later paramedics took her to the emergency room with frequent contractions. She told the paramedics her baby was not in a head-down position, which they reported to the triage nurse.
Moments after the patient’s arrival the emergency department triage nurse saw that her cervix was completely effaced and dilated eight centimeters. Minutes after that on the labor and delivery unit the mother requested her nurse do an ultrasound to verify the baby’s position. The nurse was not able to do the ultrasound, but the nurse did get the on-call ob/gyn to the room to do an ultrasound that confirmed a breech presentation. Nevertheless the baby was delivered vaginally more that a half-hour after the breech presentation was verified and died within five hours from oxygen deprivation to the brain during a prolonged delivery.
The Court of Appeals of Texas will allow experts to testify that the delivery which should have been a cesarean was delayed, in part, by the negligence of the hospital’s nurses in not recognizing the breech presentation, not appreciating its seriousness and and reporting the breech presentation to a physician.
Med. Ctr. v. Duarte, 2019 WL 1065052 (Tex. App., March 7, 2019).More references from nursinglaw.com
http://www.nursinglaw.com/labor&delivery12.pdf
http://www.nursinglaw.com/labor&delivery2.pdf
http://www.nursinglaw.com/labor&delivery12.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/labor-delivery-EMTALA.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/labor-delivery-nursing-chain-of-command.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/labor-delivery-nursing-negligence.htm