Jury Gives Family $4.4 Million After Symptoms Of Fetal Distress Go Undetected By Nurse In Training

Physicians and nurses go through years of schooling and practice to build the necessary knowledge and skill base to handle patients. But people want a safety net in case the physicians or nurse in training make an error. We further expect, though, that they will be carefully supervised and their work will be reviewed by a competent, experienced physician or nurse. If told otherwise most people would likely still let a doctor or nurse in training care for them but would want the treatment to be supervised by an experienced physician or nurse.

The learning curve is steep yet it does exist. While in the training period these new physicians and nurses will inevitably make errors. While many mistakes will have little, if any, consequences some will result in severe harm or possibly in the fatality of a patient. That is why they require supervision by more experienced physicians and nurses who are able to catch and correct the mistakes. Otherwise, even a single error that is not rectified by the supervising doctor or nurse can lead to tragic results.

Look at a case that was documented which involved a near full-term pregnant woman. She was nearly at full term. The woman took herself to a hospital after bouts of nausea and vomiting. On admission a nurse trainee examined her and checked her condition. The nurse trainee connected the mother to a fetal heart rate monitor to check on the unborn baby. The strip documented that the woman's unborn baby was in severe fetal distress. It was that nurse trainee, however, instead of an experienced doctor or nurse, who read the results of the fetal heart rate monitor. The nurse trainee misread the strip as normal. Lacking any supervision by a doctor or a registered nurse, the nurse trainee failed to take any action to safeguard the health of the baby and merely sent her home.

The child was delivered 3 days later. Despite the fact that the baby girl lived she was born with significant brain damage. She developed cerebral palsy. She had a seizure disorder. The little girl spent the following 4 years of her life with recurring seizures, undergoing 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 two older brothers. One was eleven and the other was sixteen. 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.

The case discussed above exemplifies the need for close supervision of nurse trainees by a doctor or experienced nurse. Although an experienced physician or nurse can make an error and misread the results of a fetal heart rate monitor, it is much more likely that a nurse trainee will make that sort of a mistake. An experienced physician or obstetrics nurses will likely have seen hundreds or even thousands of fetal heart rate monitor strips and honed the ability to determine when it indicates an abnormal pattern that needs immediate attention. And if an error by a nurse trainee is not caught by a supervising doctor or nurse the result, as in the situation discussed above, can have tragic consequences and may end in a malpractice lawsuit.