Psychiatric Patient Is Assaulted: Court Dismisses Case.

Psychiatric Patient Is Assaulted: Court Dismisses Case.

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

Assessment of the mental and physical capacities of the attacking patient and the patient victim is not something in the common knowledge of lay persons sitting on a jury.

Determining whether and how to restrain and/or supervise potentially dangerous mental patients requires professional training and understanding of the patients’ diagnoses and medical histories.

Expert testimony is required to determine whether the victim’s medical and nursing caregivers were negligent under the circumstances of this case.

The court has no choice but to dismiss this case for failure of the victim’s family to file a certification with the court that expert testimony has been obtained to support the case. COURT OF APPEALS OF TENNESSEE July 27, 2016

One resident of a state psychiatric facility attacked another resident and inflicted fatal injuries.

The family of the victim sued the corporations which had contracts to provide medical and nursing personnel for the facility.

Physicians’ orders had been written for one-on-one supervision of both residents. Nevertheless the perpetrator had been allowed to ambulate on the unit with-out anyone directly watching him.

The perpetrator was reportedly also known by the staff of the facility to be a violent criminal with a history of attacking other persons without provocation.

The Court of Appeals of Tennessee dismissed the lawsuit for failure of the victim’s family to comply with a state law requiring a sworn written certification along with the filing of the lawsuit that expert testimony exists to support the case.

The Court ruled that professional standards for physicians, nurses and nursing assistants to assess and monitor psychiatric patients who might pose a potential for harm to others, and likewise to assess and monitor patients who might be potential victims, is a subject outside the common knowledge of untrained lay persons.

It was not sufficient, in the Court’s judgment, that one-on-one supervision had been ordered for both patients. What that meant is still a subject for an expert. Newman v. Guardian, 2016 WL 4069052 (Tenn. App., July 27, 2016).