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If you're the off-going nurse "handing off" a stroke patient, take the oncoming nurse to the bedside for a brief neurological exam, advises Tia Moore, RN, CEN, clinical nurse educator for the ED at University of California San Diego Medical Center.
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If your patient is bleeding internally, you can know this in seconds instead of waiting for blood test results to come back by using a new non-invasive test for hemoglobin, developed by Irvine, CA-based Masimo.
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Patients who present to the emergency department (ED) more than once in a short amount of time for the same complaint or symptoms present some unique liability risks for emergency physicians (EPs), warns Kathleen Shostek, RN, ARM, CPHRM, senior consultant in the healthcare risk management and patient safety division of Sedgwick, a Memphis-based third party administrator for professional liability claims.
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Is malpractice litigation a real possibility due to an error made in the emergency department (ED) that harmed a patient?
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An Ebola patient presents to an emergency department (ED) and is either misdiagnosed and discharged or is not appropriately isolated and infects others. What is the liability risk for the emergency physician (EP)?
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In a fascinating case that raises more questions than provides answers, a Louisiana appellate court grappled with the issue of whether the Louisiana Medicaid program was required to pay for the out-of-state inpatient care provided to its Medicaid enrollee in Georgia after transfer from a Louisiana hospital emergency department.
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In a case related to the alleged delay in providing care to a patient, an emergency physician (EP) was accused of altering the time that he ordered certain treatments for the patient.
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In 2013, an emergency department (ED) director was terminated after commenting on a patients photo, which had been posted on Facebook by an ED nurse.1 In a similar case the same year, an emergency physician (EP) was sued after posting a photo of an intoxicated patient that included comments.
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Certain diagnoses have recurrently and consistently been the bane of emergency department (ED) physicians, with regard to malpractice payouts year after year. They continue to be missed, and lead to some of the larger awards. Below we present several recent typical cases to raise awareness and avoid liability.
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The risk of an Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) lawsuit involving a patient with psychiatric illness is low, according to a recent study.1 If emergency physicians (EPs) perform appropriate medical screening examinations, the lawsuit is rarely successful.
