DocBlawg

When Plaintiff Tesome Sampson when to the hospital last August she was 24 weeks pregnant.  Her doctor put her on bed rest to avoid an early delivery.  The doctor also prescribed medication to keep the mother from going into early labor.  Unfortunately, 10 days later Ms. Sampson was given the wrong drug and instead of delaying labor the medication hastened labor.  The drug given, Prostin E2, is used to terminate pregnancies and to speed up labor.  A few hours after receiving the drug Ms. Sampson had severe cramps and she was told she needed to move her bowels.  Her baby was born on a portable toilet that she was given. 

Ms. Sampson and the baby’s father have filed a lawsuit against St Mary’s Hospital.  The lawsuit alleges that many things went wrong.   They allege that a proper nursing care plan was not in place to handle the unclear physician’s order.  The suit alleges that a doctor wrote in an unclear and sloppy fashion and did not specify dosage or amount.  The parents contend that the nurse has to understand what the order is, what the medication is used for, and then should have questioned the order.  

The hospital, owned by Tenet issued the following statement:

 ”this was an unfortunate error that occurred despite the safeguards we have in place. …. We apologized to the family for this deeply regrettable error.”

The baby, Traniya, was born in September.  She suffers from profound brain damage as well as other physician disabilities.  She has incurred over $3.5 million in medical bills so far and it is expected that the ongoing cost for her care will top $4 million for every year of her life. 

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/story/1195656.html

DOCBLAWG COMMENT:  Another bad result especially since the baby is incurring massive costs related to care every day.  Tenant has admitted the error in its statement making it very unlikely that such a case will proceed to jury trial.  This case brings up interesting issues, for instance, if the physician’s order was illegible to the nurse then why would she place the order without reconfirming with the physician?  Why did the physician write an illegible order in the first place?  It is unclear from the story if Ms. Sampson was originally on the correct drug and that the mistake 10 days later was the result of a fluke or changed order.  One would assume that a nurse who would be attending to this pregnant expectant mother would be familiar with the drugs given and why; wouldn’t it be strange that a physician would order a drug to start labor when the mom was only at 26 weeks gestation.  As usual, the media only gives a snippet of information leaving all the readers to speculate regarding all the facts.