Assessment: Court Finds No Nursing Negligence.
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
May 2017
The patient’s nursing expert’s opinion does not define in detail the steps that nurses, as opposed to physicians, are expected to take in obtaining a medical history from a patient as part of a nursing assessment in the hospital.
COURT OF APPEALS OF TEXAS March 30, 2017The patient was twice admitted to the hospital with breathing difficulties and complaints of chest pain. After her second hospital stay she went to a rehab facility for physical therapy. During physical therapy she sustained a spinal injury. Surgery was not successful and the patient is now a paraplegic.
The patient sued the hospital and the rehab facility for negligence. As to the hospital it was alleged the hospital’s nurses in completing their patient assessments failed to discover and note in her chart that the patient had a twenty year-old diagnosis of osteogenesis imperfecta, a defect that rendered her spine very fragile and susceptible to injury. If the hospital’s nurses had done their duty, it was alleged, the physical therapists would have known her spine was fragile, proceeded differently and not injured her.
The Court of Appeals of Texas dismissed the hospital from the case, finding no negligence by its nurses. The patient’s nursing expert’s opinion failed to delineate the process nurses are expected to follow to obtain a patient’s history as part of a nursing assessment. The Court said obtaining a detailed history relevant to a patient’s medical care or physical therapy, beyond what is relevant to the nursing interventions the patient will require, would amount to the practice of medicine.
Hospital v. Abshire, 2017 WL 118130 (Tex. App., March 30, 2017).More from nursinglaw.com
http://www.nursinglaw.com/neurocheck.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/neuro-procedure-nursing-negligence.pdf
http://www.nursinglaw.com/head-injury-nursing-assessment.htm