A woman who died in May 2004, three hours after giving birth to her son, because a nurse attached the bag of anesthetic for her epidural to a line going to her arm rather than to her back, was the victim of “gross negligent manslaughter” according to an inquest recently concluded on the tragedy. The finding was that the wrongful death was due not only to the mistake in attaching the bag, but in the failure to properly check it, which the husband said could have been done at any of six different opportunities, but was not. The nurse testified that she thought she had connected either saline or a blood volume expander to boost the woman’s blood pressure. Not only is the nurse liable for her criminal medical malpractice, but the hospital as well, which admitted to a chaotic storage of drugs that may have led to the pharmaceutical error. Similar but non-fatal misconnections occurred at the hospital in 1994 and 2001.
If you have lost someone you love as a result of a delivery room error in Chicago, contact experienced medical malpractice lawyer Barry G. Doyle at the Law Offices of Barry G. Doyle, P.C. for a free initial consultation.
