Hospital Public Call-In and Referral Phone Line: Nurse Gave Negligent Advice

Hospital Public Call-In and Referral Phone Line: Nurse Gave Negligent Advice

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

May 1998

Quick Summary: A nurse's negligent advice kept a heart-attack victim from going to the E.R. for seven hours.

The present philosophy in the medical community is that the sooner treatment for a heart attack can begin, the higher the probability the effects of the heart attack can be lessened. A heart attack means a portion of the heart muscle is deprived of oxygenated blood. Once cells of the heart muscle die, the effect is irreversible.

A heart attack can leave a patient with a certain percentage of diminished capacity to perform his former occupation, for which the patient can seek compensation in court.

To have a valid legal claim of healthcare malpractice, three elements must be proved:

The patient must show the court what is the applicable professional standard of care for the care provider in question.

The patient must show there was a negligent failure to render treatment in conformity with the standard of care.

The patient must show he or she sustained some form of injury that was caused by the care provider’s negligence. COURT OF APPEALS OF OHIO, 1997.

The patient was thirty-six years old. At 5:00 p.m. he began sweating, belching and feeling pressure in his chest and became fatigued at work. After a brief rest he went home. At 7:00 p.m., because his symptoms were not going away, he took an anti-gas medication, and then went to sleep. While he was asleep, around 7:15 p.m., his wife phoned the local hospital’s call-in and referral telephone service that was provided to the general public.

The wife spoke with a nurse on the phone. The nurse discussed the general warning signs of a heart attack and told her her husband may be having a heart attack.

However, the nurse also said not to wake him, but to wait for him to awaken before deciding whether or not to get him to the hospital’s emergency room.

The nurse did not advise the wife of the gravity of the situation or of the advisability of seeking immediate medical care. According to the Court of Appeals of Ohio, the nurse merely sent out some literature about heart attacks in the mail.

When the husband awoke, shortly after midnight, he still had the same symptoms, so he and his wife went to the emergency room at the same hospital the wife had phoned earlier in the evening. The husband was treated for a heart attack. There was no allegation made in the lawsuit the treatment he received after midnight was inappropriate in any way for a patient some hours after the onset of symptoms.

However, the court faulted the hospital over the negligent advice the nurse who answered the phone had given earlier in the evening. Although the husband recovered, he claimed he did recover fully. He claimed he was disabled from working at his formed occupation. He claimed his disability probably would not have happened had he received prompt rather than delayed medical treatment. The court ruled he had the right to sue. Starkey v. Medical Center, 690 N.E. 2d 57 (Ohio App., 1997).