Unsafe Transfer: Grounds Seen For Negligence Suit.
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
July 2016
The lawsuit alleged the resident’s leg was lacerated by a sharp edge on the bed rail for which the protective plastic cap was missing. Inspectors believed her leg was cut by metal on the wheelchair itself.
COURT OF APPEALS OF TEXAS June 9, 2016During a transfer from her wheelchair to her bed an eighty-seven year-old nursing home resident sustained a 10 cm x 5 cm laceration on her leg which bled copiously according to the records. She was taken to the hospital for sutures and returned to the nursing home. Three months later she went back to the hospital for treatment of deep vein thrombosis in the leg. She was discharged to a different nursing home and lived there two more years before she passed.
While she was still alive the resident’s family filed suit against the nursing home for negligence in the wheelchair to bed transfer in which she was injured. The Court of Appeals of Texas ruled that the family’s nursing and medical experts’ opinions established grounds for a negligence lawsuit, despite conflicting theories as to the exact mechanism which caused the patient’s injury. The family’s nursing expert stated in her report that the standard of care requires a nursing home’s staff to perform transfers safely. A person or persons performing a transfer must see to it that any object that can cause a laceration, including an aspect of the bed rail or the wheelchair, which can cause a laceration to the patient does not cause such a laceration. The family’s medical expert agreed with the family’s nursing expert that a safe transfer necessarily involves avoiding any sharp object that can inflict a laceration on the patient.
Nursing Home v. Steele, 2016 WL 3197846 (Tex. App., June 9, 2016).More references from nursinglaw.com
http://www.nursinglaw.com/assistance-to-transfer.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/transfer.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/transfer-wheelchair-negligence.pdf
http://www.nursinglaw.com/transfer-technique-nursing-negligence.pdf
http://www.nursinglaw.com/transfer2.htm