Nurses play a vital role in the functioning of our healthcare system and are essential members of healthcare staff in hospitals. Just like doctors, nurses owe a duty of care to their patients and are obligated to provide competent medical services. When patients are admitted to hospital, it is the nurses who see, speak with, and monitor the patient far more often than the doctors.
Nurses are responsible for communication with patients, doctors, and other members of the medical team to facilitate patient care. Perhaps most importantly, nurses are also responsible for monitoring patients postoperatively while they are in the hospital, and for ensuring that medical service providers are informed about changes or deterioration in the patient’s condition. When a nurse >makes a mistake or fails to carefully monitor their patients, the consequences can be severe.
Nurses can be charged with negligence for any action, or failure to act, that causes injury or harm to their patients and does not meet the appropriate standard of care. When a patient’s condition begins to deteriorate, or the patient starts to display signs of postoperative complications or infection, nurses must identify these signs and refer the patient to a higher level of medical care.
Postoperative Monitoring
One of the essential responsibilities of nurses is to monitor patients postoperatively for signs of infection. Appropriate monitoring can include checking the patient’s vital signs, temperature, level of consciousness, pain assessment, oxygen saturation levels, infusion rates, and hourly urine output. This includes checking the patient’s surgical sites for signs of infectious processes that, if not treated and managed appropriately, could develop into life-threatening sepsis and septic shock. Small changes in appearance, blood pressure, and heart rate can indicate far more severe underlying causes.
When patients begin exhibiting signs of infection following a surgical procedure, the nursing staff must report the observations to the responsible doctors and respond accordingly. Infections that are not treated in time may develop into sepsis, which is a life-threatening medical emergency. When nurses fail to monitor their patients closely or fail to report signs of infection to the responsible physicians, they may be liable for the negative outcomes suffered by their patients.
Infections and Septic Patients
Bacteria which enters the body through a wound or post-operative surgical site is detected by the body’s immune system and triggers an immune response. The immune system will naturally raise the temperature at the site of the infection and will increase blood flow to the infected area to fight the bacteria. When infections go untreated and are left to spread, that same bacteria can enter the bloodstream and spread throughout the body. This triggers an extreme immune response, causing the patient’s body temperature to rise, blood pressure to drop, and the heart rate to increase. When this immune response occurs, the patient has become septic. This overwhelming immune response is a prime example of why postoperative monitoring is such an essential component of proper nursing care.
When patients begin to exhibit signs of infection, it is essential for nursing staff to identify the symptoms and communicate the concern to the physicians before the infection has a chance to spread and trigger an overwhelming immune response. When patients do become septic, nurses have an obligation to identify and communicate the patient’s symptoms to the doctors as soon as possible.
The Surviving Sepsis Campaign’s International Guidelines for the Management of Sepsis and Septic Shock indicate that time is of the essence when treating patients who become septic. Antimicrobial medication must be given to the patient immediately, ideally within one hour of identifying that the patient has become septic. If nurses miss the signs of infection or do not realize that their patient has become septic, this delay in identification and treatment can allow the infection to get progressively worse and more dangerous.
When treatment of infection or sepsis is delayed because the signs of infection were negligently overlooked by nursing staff, those nurses may be liable for the harms suffered by their patients.
When to Speak with a Medical Malpractice Lawyer
In order to be successful in a medical malpractice claim regarding inadequate monitoring or nursing care, an individual must be able to prove that the harm or injuries they suffered was caused by negligent nursing care. This is a legal element known as “causation”. It is important to remember that not every infection or case of sepsis is caused by negligent nursing care. When considering legal action, an experienced medical malpractice lawyer can help you determine whether or not causation is likely to be proven in your case.
The lawyers at BIMMA have extensive experience evaluating and advancing medical malpractice claims against nurses and hospital staff who fail to monitor their patients appropriately. If you are considering legal action, the experienced medical malpractice lawyers at BIMMA would be happy to provide you with a no-obligation consultation to review your claim and help you determine whether legal action is the right course for you.
