Jury Compensates Parents $1.6 Million For Stillbirth Her Baby Due To Emergency Room Physician's Error
Altogether, there are two things patients really expect from their physicians. This is probably never more true than when the patient is an expectant mother who is entrusting the physician with the wellbeing of her baby. To begin with, it is critical for the doctor to pay attention to the mother's own intuition. As the pregnancy progresses the woman learns to tell what is normal in her pregnancy and what is not. Not considering complaints and her sense that something is wrong, without definitive evidence to the contrary, can bring about tragedy.
Also, the physician ought to recognize and follow up on evidence consistent with a significant problem. Isn't this what they are taught and trained to be able to do? It is a natural parental instinct to want, to trust, that nothing bad happens to thier unborn child and he or she is born healthy. It can seem like a horrific betrayal of the have faith in they put in the doctor that he or she has the training and experience to tell the difference between a normally progressing pregnancy particularly if it is a complication that jeopardizes the life of the unborn baby.
In the real world, though, there is always the possibility that the pregnancy can take a very bad turn. Consider a situation in which a woman in the seventh month of her pregnancy, was admitted at the hospital by her doctor with complaints of back pain, abdominal pain, and persistent vaginal bleeding. After examining her and looking at the readings from the fetal heart rate monitor, the doctor decided that the baby was doing well and nothing more had to be done. Even thought the woman was still bleeding and kept telling the physician that she was still having pain in her abdomen, the physician discharged her without any additional testing to uncover why she was bleeding.
Later that same afternoon, after the abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding got worse, she consulted her physician. On examinig the expectant mother, the doctor sent her to the hospital for the birth of her baby. The woman experienced massive hemorrhaging while being transported to the hospital. When she arrived at the hospital they immediately prepared her for an emergency C-section however the child was stillborn before they were able to perform the C-section. The mother needed transfusions due to the heavy loss of blood. The reason for the pain and vaginal bleeding was determined to be a placental abruption. The law firm that handled this case reported that it took the case to trial and was able to obtain a jury award in the amount of $1,651,166 for the mother.
In this matter, the woman could sense that what was happening to her was not normal. She knew that something had changed in her pregnancy. Her intuition was letting her know that there was a complication with the pregnancy and so she went to the hospital to see her physician. Nevertheless the physician dismissed the very problems for which she took herself to the hospital. The doctor seemingly took into account merely that she was not in labor and that the fetal heart rate monitor showed no abnormalities in the baby's hearbeat. The physician took a negative finding to these two as sufficient to decide that there was nothing wrong.
Obviously, an abnormal heart rate could have been an indication that she was having a considerable complication requiring appropriate action immediately. But so was the fact that she hd constant pain and bleeding. And they were completely disregarded - essentially, the doctor also dismissed the woman's intuition.
The doctor also seemingly never actually regarded a placental abruption in the differential diagnosis for the pain even though collectively they are know to be correlated with a placental abruption. This is not how doctors would generally suggest is the appropriate way to assess a patient