Skin Care: Change In Patient’s Status As Grounds For A Lawsuit.
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
September 2017
Nurses must notify the patient’s physician of significant changes in the patient’s condition. However, to have grounds to sue the nurses, the patient or family must identify the specific significant changes the nurses failed to report to the physician and prove how the nurses’ failure to report them contributed to the outcome.
COURT OF APPEALS OF MISSISSIPPI July 25, 2017In preparation for hip replacement surgery the elderly patient’s physician sent her to a rehab facility for physical therapy to improve her strength. On admission to rehab she had multiple areas of skin breakdown on her body including two bedsores on her buttocks. During her three weeks in the rehab facility the bedsores on her buttocks grew larger and deeper and became infected to the point she had to be hospitalized. After a month in the hospital she passed away from respiratory failure caused by sepsis.
The family sued the rehab facility claiming the nurses failed to notify the patient’s physician of significant changes in her medical status. The Court of Appeals of Mississippi ruled the nurses did in fact contact the physician promptly when dead tissue appeared, then carried out the physician’s new orders and, as the physician had ordered, sent the patient to the hospital when they could no longer manage the situation. The family’s nursing expert did not fault the nurses’ care, only the alleged fact they failed to report to the physician. However, the expert was unable to identify any further changes that needed to be reported after the nurses made contact.
Butler v. Chadwick, __ So. 3d __, 2017 WL 3190593 (Miss. App., July 25, 2017).More from nursinglaw.com
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http://www.nursinglaw.com/skin-care-substandard.htm
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