Medical Malpractice Claim Leads to $4,400,000 Jury Award When Nurse Trainee Did Not Recognize Fetal Distress

Physicians and nurses go through years of schooling and practice to build the necessary knowledge and skill base to handle patients. People realize that new physicians and nurses need to practice on patients as a way to gain the necessary expertise. We expect that they will make errors along the way. If told otherwise most people would likely still allow 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. Although many errors will have minor, if any, implications some will result in serious harm or possibly in the fatality of a patient. That is why they need supervision by more senior physicians and nurses who can 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.

In one published lawsuit an expectant mother, near full term, went to the hospital as she was experienced nausea and vomiting. The expectant mother was admitted to the hospital and a nurse in training was placed in charge of her. The nurse trainee connected the mother to a fetal heart rate monitor to check on the unbo
baby. The strip indicated that the woman’s unbo
baby was in severe fetal distress. It was that nurse trainee, however, rather than an experienced doctor or nurse, who read the tracings from the fetal heart rate monitor. The nurse trainee misread the strip as normal. Even though there was no any supervision by a doctor or a registered nurse, the nurse trainee took no action to protect the health of the baby and just reassured her and discharged her.

The childbirth took place three days after the visit to the hospitalafter 3 days. This was the scheduled delivery date. While the baby girl lived she had major brain damage. She developed cerebral palsy. She had persistent seizures. The little girl spent the following 4 years of her life with recurring seizures, having to go through therapy and had to be fed through a feeding tube as she could not 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 handled this matter on behalf of the family reported that the case went to trial and that the jury awarded the parents $4.4 million.

The claim analyzed above demonstrates the need for close supervision of nurse trainees by a doctor or experienced nurse. True, even experienced doctors and nurses can sometimes incorrectly read a fetal heart rate strip. A nurse trainee just has not seen enough monitor strips to build the appropriate level of competency in interpreting one. When the mistake is not caught, as in this case, the result can be devastating and lead to a malpractice case.