Patient Confused From Medication: Hospital Personnel Must Watch For Falls, Be Careful In Transport
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
January 1998
The patient’s confusion, heighten by the medication he had been given, created a legal duty for the hospital’s professional and non-professional staff to use reasonable care for the patient’s safety, in order to ensure that he did not fall or hurt himself in his confused state.
The elderly patient had fallen at home and was admitted to the hospital in a confused mental state.
His physician ordered and the patient was given Demerol, which would tend to alter the patient’s mental abilities even further.
The patient had no fractures when he came in. He broke a vertebra in his neck, while in the exclusive custody and control of the hospital, either by falling while he was not being watched by hospital employees or by being mishandled by hospital employees in transport.
Either way, there is an inference of negligence from which a jury could find the hospital was negligent in this patient’s care. COURT OF APPEALS OF GEORGIA, 1997.
The patient, already suffering from some degree of mental confusion, received Demerol in the hospital, which would tend to make a confused patient more confused. In the opinion of the Court of Appeals of Georgia, this placed a legal duty on the hospital staff to watch the patient diligently to see that he did not fall and to be very careful when handling and transporting him.
The patient had fallen at home. On arrival at the hospital a series of x-rays were negative. He actually was taken to x-ray twice, once early in the morning directly from the emergency room, and a second time that afternoon, because the radiologist thought the first set of x-rays were suboptimal. A few days later he was in obvious pain and stated he had been dropped by two men in the x-ray department. A CT scan at this time revealed a cervical fracture. All personnel on duty in the x-ray department signed affidavits denying the patient had been dropped.
The trial court let the hospital out of the case, but the Court of Appeals reversed and ordered the hospital to stand trial.
Carrying out the hospital’s legal duty to this patient was not solely the province of the hospital’s professional staff. Even non-licensed personnel responsible for handling and transporting patients should have appreciated the special needs of a patient who suffered from confusion and who was receiving medication tending to diminish the mental status of an already confused patient, the court believed.
As an aside, the court pointed out that in a civil negligence case it is appropriate to admit into evidence the patient’s treatment records and discharge summary as the hospital’s business records. Lane vs. Hospital, 492 S.E. 2d 317 (Ga. App., 1997).