Retained Surgical Sponge: Court Faults Nurses And Physician.
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
June 2018
A surgical sponge left inside a patient during a surgical procedure raises a legal presumption of negligence by the surgeon and the nursing personnel involved in the procedure. The defendants have the burden of proof to prove they were not negligent. SUPREME COURT OF MISSISSIPPI April 26, 2018
The patient came in for laparoscopic removal of her gallbladder. During the procedure the surgeon switched to an open abdominal approach due to unexpected inflammation surrounding the gall-bladder, a possible complication to which the patient had been alerted beforehand.
The surgery was done in 2004. Tests in 2011 related the patient’s persistent abdominal pain to a surgical sponge left in-side her from the gallbladder operation.
The surgeon’s legal defense was that he relied upon the circulating nurses’ and RN scrub tech’s sponge counts. The hospital pointed out the nurses did not expect an open abdominal case. Nevertheless the operative report was initialed for three successive correct sponge counts; the actual sponge-count sheet was discarded years before the lawsuit.
The Supreme Court of Mississippi threw out the jury’s verdict of no negligence and ordered a new trial. The jury should have been instructed that all the surgical personnel are presumed negligent until they prove otherwise when a foreign object is left inside a surgical patient. The circulating and scrub nurses being negligent would not relieve the surgeon of responsibility. Nor would the surgeon’s overall legal responsibility for the case relieve the nurses of liability for a foreign object they allowed to be left in the patient.
Thompson v. Hospital, __ So. 3d __, 2018 WL 1957378 (Miss., April 26, 2018).More references from nursinglaw.com
http://www.nursinglaw.com/laparotomy-pad-retained-surgery.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/surgical-wound-packing-res-ipsa-loquitur.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/perioperative-nursing-advocate-patient.pdf
http://www.nursinglaw.com/ornurse5.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/operating-room-circulating-nurse.pdf