Click here to request a complimentary copy of our current issue.
Patient’s Fall: Nursing Negligence Found.
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
On the day the patient fell his care plan was changed from two-person to one-person assist with ambulation, with no documented fall-risk reevaluation to support that decision. He had been found on the floor uninjured earlier that same day. COURT OF APPEALS OF OHIO December 23, 2014
The seventy-six year-old patient went from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility for rehab after back surgery. On admission to skilled nursing he was rated a high fall risk. The care plan was written for two-person assistance to ambulate. He fell in the skilled nursing facility while being ambulated by only one person and sustained a fatal closed head injury.
The Court of Appeals of Ohio found sufficient legal grounds for the family’s lawsuit against the skilled nursing facility. The family’s lawsuit alleged understaffing as the underlying root cause of the patient’s fall and subsequent death. The family’s lawsuit was also supported by a more specific opinion from a nursing expert who reviewed the patient’s chart and found that the care plan was changed from two-person to one-person assist with ambulation the morning of the day the patient fell.
On a very fundamental level the decision to make such a change required a new comprehensive assessment of the patient’s condition and reevaluation of his fall risk. No documentation of any such reassessment or reevaluation could be found in the chart. Most likely none was done. Even if a reassessment and reevaluation were documented, the change was plainly wrong, given that the patient was found on the floor in his room uninjured earlier the same day he later fell and was fatally injured. Carte v. Skilled Facility, 2014 WL 7274801 (Ohio App., December 23, 2014).
More references from nursinglaw.com
http://www.nursinglaw.com/nursing-home-fall-standard-of-care.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/patient-fall-nursing-home.pdf