Undiagnosed Fetal Distress Leads to Baby’s Severe Brain Injury And $4,400,000 Medical Malpractice Case by: Joseph Hernandez

Physicians and nurses go through years of schooling and practice to build the crucial knowledge and skill base to help patients. People realize that new doctors and nurses need to practice on patients as a way to gain the necessary expertise. We expect that they will make mistakes along the way. If told otherwise most people would likely still allow a physician or nurse in training care for them but would want the treatment to be supervised by an experienced doctor or nurse. 

The learning curve is steep yet it does exist. While in the training period these new doctors and nurses will inevitably make errors. Although many mistakes will have minor, if any, repercussions some will cause serious harm or even in the death of a patient. That is why they need supervision by more experienced physicians and nurses who can note and rectify the errors. Otherwise, even one mistake that is not caught by the supervising physician or nurse can produce tragic results. 

Recently a claim was reported that discussed how an expectant mother went to the hospital with complaints of nausea and vomiting. The pregnant woman was admitted to the hospital where a nurse in training assumed responsibility for her care. It was the nurse trainee, and not a registered nurse or a doctor who interpreted the strip from the fetal heart rate monitor. Interpreting the strip as normal and concluding that there was no danger to the unborn baby, the nurse trainee discharged the expectant mother. In reality, the baby’s oxygen supply was significantly blocked and that the baby’s health was in grave danger.. 

Three days later the infant was delivered as planned. Although the baby girl survived the delivery she had major brain damage. She developed cerebral palsy. She had persistent seizures. The little girl spent the following four years of her life enduring 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 parents and by her 2 older brothers. One was eleven and the other was sixteen. 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. 

This case shows how dangerous it is for a nurse trainee to treat patients without supervision from a physician or a registered supervising nurse. True, even experienced doctors and nurses can sometimes misread a fetal heart rate strip. A nurse trainee just has not seen enough monitor strips to build the needed level of competency in interpreting one. When the mistake is not caught, as in this case, the effect can be devastating and lead to a malpractice case.