subject: Nurse Trainee Who Did Not Recognize Unborn Baby In Fetal Distress Has To Pay Out $4.4 Million [print this page] When seen by a doctor or a nurse people typically have an expectation that the physician or nurse either (1) has the skills and expertise to make an accurate diagnosis of anything that they may have and suggest best treatment or (2) is being supervised by a senior doctor or nurse who does. According to the second situation, the physician or nurse can learn while treating actual patients as long as their errors are caught and rectified so that patients are not hurt. After all, they go to school, study, and invest many, many hours learning practical understanding through real experience. However before they attain an appropriate degree of experience they will probably make mistakes. Plus going back to expectations people want to be sure that any such mistake will not hurt them.
The learning curve is steep yet it does exist. While in the training period these new doctors and nurses will inevitably make mistakes. Although many errors will have little, if any, repercussions some will result in severe harm or possibly in the fatality of a patient. That is why they need supervision by more senior physicians and nurses who are able to note and rectify the errors. Otherwise, even one error that is not rectified by the supervising physician or nurse can lead to tragic outcomes.
Look at a claim that was documented which involved a near full-term expectant mother. The woman was almost at full term. The woman went to the hospital after persistent nausea and vomiting. At the hospital the woman was monitored by a nurse trainee. The nurse trainee read the results as normal, determining that the baby was doing well and in no danger, even though they in fact showed signs of severe fetal distress, a situation which requires immediate attention. The woman was sent home without knowing that her baby was suffering from a lack of oxygen.
Three days after the child was delivered as planned. Despite the fact that the child survived the delivery she was born with severe brain damage. She developed cerebral palsy. She had persistent seizures. The little girl spent the following 4 years of her life enduring seizures, having to go through therapy and had to be fed through a feeding tube as she was not able to eat on her own, before dying due to complications from her cerebral palsy. She was survived by her father and mother and by her 11 and 16 year old brothers. The law firm that represented the parents was able to report that they took the case to trial and achieved a verdict on behalf of the parents in the amount of $4,400,000.
This case demonstrates the risk involved in allowing a nurse trainee to treat patients without supervision from a doctor or a registered supervising nurse. True, even experienced physicians and nurses can sometimes misread a fetal heart rate strip. A nurse trainee just has not read a sufficient number of monitor strips to build the needed degree of competency in interpreting one. A mistake on the part of the nurse trainee and the failure to adequately supervise the nurse trainee, as in the case above, may lead to a medical malpractice claim.
