Hospital/Nursing Errors
Our lawyers have represented patients injured from hospital and nursing negligence. People are hospitalized because they need high levels of care from a group of healthcare professionals, including primary care physicians, specialists, nurses, therapists and laboratory personnel. The doctors and therapists only see hospitalized patients briefly; it is the job of the nurses to provide round-the-clock care, and notice when patients take a turn for the worse. Unfortunately, some hospitals demand their nurses care for too many patients, so mistakes are made: a patient’s change in condition is not noticed until it is too late, a medication is given in the wrong dose injuring the patient, or a doctor’s bad order is blindly followed instead of the nurse using her education, experience and judgment to advocate for her patient.
Here are some examples our attorneys have seen of hospital and nursing negligence:
- Nurses did not carefully monitor 60-year-old intensive care unit patient’s glucose level resulting in stroke and brain damage.
- Nurses’ delay in responding to broken ventilator alarm resulted in 66-year-old patient sustaining brain damage from lack of oxygen.
- Unsupervised psychiatric patient commits suicide despite being on suicide watch.
- Nurse misunderstood doctor’s order and gave 10-year-old patient One Hundred times the dose ordered resulting in death.
- Nurses allowed IV to leak into back of 45-year-old patient’s hand resulting in permanent nerve damage.
- Nurses did not adequately clean tracheostomy tube, which became plugged with 23-year-old patient’s mucus resulting in brain damage from lack of oxygen.
- Nurse used Adult IV pump on Newborn in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit resulting in fluid overload, brain bleed and permanent brain damage.
- Nurse did not promptly call doctor when 66-year-old patient’s heart rate rapidly increased with drop in blood pressure resulting in cardiopulmonary arrest, ineffective resuscitation attempt and death.
- Emergency Department physicians and nurses failed to perform the proper testing for several hours on a middle-aged man who came to the emergency room with 10/10 chest pain suffering from a heart attack. The delay caused permanent heart injury.
- Emergency Department physicians and nurses failed to identify a patient was having a stroke in a timely manner, and without timely treatment, the stroke caused permanent brain injury.
- A community hospital failed to transfer a complicated patient to a larger hospital with more resources. Instead, putting hospital profits above the patient the patient received sub-standard care and died at the hospital.
- A patient went to the hospital for cancer screening and had radiology images taken. The patient was told that they did not have cancer. Months later the patient was tested again and cancer was found. Looking back doctors were able to see that the patient had cancer that was visible on the earlier radiology imaging studies that was missed. The patient died as a result of the delay in cancer diagnosis and treatment.