Florida Injury Attorney Blog

The family of William T. Fain, 80, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Westside Regional Medical Center. Fain was admitted to the hospital’s ER on Super Bowl Sunday in 2006 after having a seizure. Hospital doctors told nurses to take him to the intensive care unit and to make sure that he didn’t fall off the bed. The nurses were ordered to lower the bed, install bedrails, and frequently check on him.

The agency nurse monitoring Fain did not follow these orders. Soon after kissing family members goodbye for the night, Fain was found on the floor after falling off the bed. He sustained brain damage from hitting his head and died two weeks after the fall.

The family alleges that the fact that agency nurses are unfamiliar with or do not follow hospital procedures is an issue at Westside Regional. The hospital has responded to this accusation by stating its confidence in the care that the nurses at the hospital provides. Nightingale Nurses is the staffing agency that provided the agency nurse to the hospital.

Agency nurses are being used more often to staff hospitals because of the shortage of full-time nurses. In two hospital surveys conducted in 2007, results showed that 10% of nursing posts are vacant. This does not take into account the fact that many hospitals reportedly wish that they could hire more nurses than the number of posts that their budgets allow.

About 1 out of every 8 nurses working in Florida is a fill-in nurse. The Florida Hospital Association has acknowledged the downside of employing someone who is only a temporary worker and not a permanent part of an organization. It also, however, noted that hiring a temporary nurse is better than being understaffed. The use of agency nurses is reportedly an even more common practice at hospices and in the home health service.

Problems that can arise with fill-in nurses include:

• They may be unfamiliar with the facility, its policies and procedures.
• Because they don't always work with a patient regularly, they may not notice when there has been a change in the patient's condition.

Groups who represent Florida nurses are supporting bills that would obligate Florida hospitals to report staffing levels, including nurse-to-patient ratios. They are hoping that such a mandate would improve work conditions for nurses and provide better care for patients.

Our Florida personal injury law firm handles wrongful death cases as well as claims and lawsuits involving medical malpractice.

Lawsuit over man's death puts use of agency nurses in spotlight, Sun-Sentinel, March 10, 2008

Measure would require hospitals to divulge nurse staffing levels, Naplesnews.com, March 9, 2008

Related Web Resources:

Westside Regional Medical Center

Nightingale Nurses

Continue reading "Florida Wrongful Death Lawsuit Focuses on Use of “Fill-In” Nurses in Hospitals " »

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Posted In: Medical Malpractice , Nursing Home Abuse , Wrongful Death

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The family of 20-year-old Rachel Finzi has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Florida psychologist Adam Feder, who has been criminally charged with her manslaughter death and of trafficking in controlled substances.

Finzi was a patient of Feder, 40, for two years. He also was sexually involved with Finzi, who he started treating when she was 18. The wrongful death lawsuit, filed today in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, accuses Feder and Compass Health Systems (CHS), the company that employed Feder, of being responsible for her death.

Finzi’s family brought her to CHS for treatment because she was suffering from psychological problems and depression. Feder was her psychologist and he gave her illegal prescription drugs and marijuana. Prosecutors say that Feder used other doctors’ prescription pads to write the prescriptions and obtain them illegally. As a psychologist, Finzi is not allowed to prescribe medication.

Finzi was found dead at his apartment from an OxyContin overdose in 2006. Finzi’s family says that CHS acted negligently by hiring Feder.

Medical professionals are required by law to provide their patients with the proper and ethical medical care. When failure to do so results in the serious injury or death of a person, that medical provider can be held liable via a medical malpractice or wrongful death lawsuit.

In South Florida, our wrongful death law firm has successfully handled all kinds of death and injury cases, including claims and lawsuits involving medical malpractice. We would like to offer you a free consultation to discuss your case.

Finzi’s family is seeking financial compensation for their daughter’s medical costs and their pain and suffering caused by her death.

Victim's Family Files Lawsuit against Florida Psychologist Arrested for Patient's OxyContin Death, EMediaWire.com, March 3, 2008

Psychologist charged in girlfriend's OD death, Miami Herald, February 26, 2008

Related Web Resources:

OxyContin, DEA

OxyContin Side Effects, RxList

Continue reading "Family of 20-Year-Old Girl Sues Florida Psychologist for Her Wrongful Death by Prescription Overdose" »

Posted by Paige Trop & Ameen | Permalink | Email This Post

Posted In: Medical Malpractice , Wrongful Death

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The son of a 63-year-old woman who died while recovering from a thigh operation at the Fort Walton Beach Medical Center in Florida is suing the center for medical malpractice.

Vernon “Chip” Kooser was shocked to discover that the cause of Janice Kooser’s death was a “blunt force trauma” to the head. He says that the hospital never told him that his mother had fallen and hit her head on September 2. Her injury made her a high-risk candidate for a fall accident. Two days after the fall, she went into a coma. She died the following day.

Fort Walton Beach Medical Center claims that it was their night nurse that prevented Janice’s head from hitting anything other than the bed mattress.

Kooser had been hospitalized for four years. She had been characterized as physically unsteady, sometime delusional, and most of the time incoherent. On her chart, she was rated as a 31 in terms of being at risk for falling. The chart’s maximum is 30. She also reportedly had subdural hematoma, which makes a person more vulnerable to head injuries.

The medical malpractice trial is taking place this week. One issue at stake is whether the hospital did enough to prevent the fall from happening. One of the witnesses, a nursing field expert, testified that the staff took reasonable precautions to prevent the fall from happening. She says that the fall could have happened to anyone.

A doctor that has been testifying as a medical expert for the plaintiff said that staff did not follow proper protocal, which requires armbands to be fitted onto patients that are at high-risk of falling. The witness also said that the hospital did not provide a card-ex, which is a card that provides all the data about Janice’s condition.

A sign was not posted at the entrance to her hospital room notifying staffers that she was a “fall” risk. The medical expert says that the hospital could have done more to ensure that she did not leave her bed. He said that staff members should have notified Janice’s doctor about the seriousness of her fall or that she was displaying certain symptoms, such as not using the morphine pump to relieve her pain, not eating, and being nonresponsive.

Janice fell while trying to leave her bed to use the restroom.

Doctors, nurses, hospitals, and are medical providers most provide all patients with a certain quality and level of medical care. Failure to do so can result in an medical malpractice claim or lawsuit if a patient is injured or dies because of negligence or carelessness.

Common causes for filing a medical malpractice lawsuit:

• Wrong diagnosis
• Failure to diagnose
• Surgical mistakes
• Prescription errors
• Failure to provide the proper care
• Not providing the proper information on a patient’s medical chart
• Medical negligence
• Lack of informed consent
• Delayed diagnosis
• Nursing care errors
• Physician error
• Hospital errors

The statute of limitations for filing a medical malpractice claim in Florida is two years from the time that the injured patient or family members found out that an injury occurred because of medical malpractice.

FWB Medical Center facing malpractice lawsuit for woman's death, Northwest Florida Daily News, September 26, 2007

Related Web Resources:

Fort Walton Beach Medical Center

Medical Malpractice, Public Citizen

Continue reading "Florida Medical Center Faces Medical Practice Lawsuit After Death of Elderly Patient" »

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Posted In: Medical Malpractice

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A recent report on CNN.com emphasizes the need for patients to examine whether they have been misdiagnosed by a physician. The article offers five situations that might indicate that a wrongful diagnosis has taken place:

1. You fail to improve after treatment.
2. Your symptoms are different from what your diagnosis says they should be.
3. Your diagnosis is based purely on a lab test; labs make errors too.
4. Your physician says that you have a rare illness even though your symptoms are pretty common.
5. You are diagnosed for an ailment that normally requires a specific test, which you never received.

In 2005, the Journal of American Medical Association reported that studies of autopsies revealed that doctors misdiagnose ailments 10 percent of the time.

In 2006, the Annals of Internal Medicine published a report that said that simple physician-related errors caused nearly 60% of incidents where patients sustained injuries because of misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis.

Out of 307 medical malpractice claims, 30% of the patients died. Nearly 60% of the patients reported personal injury. 187 incidents were attributed to mistakes made during diagnosis. Wrong diagnosis, failure to diagnose, and delayed diagnosis are just some of the many kinds of medical malpractice errors that can occur.

Doctors, nurses, surgeons, dentists, and other medical professionals are obligated to provide all patients with proper medical care, including proper and timely diagnosis. Failure to do so is considered medical malpractice and can be grounds for a claim or lawsuit from any injured parties.

Here are a few Florida statistics regarding medical malpractice provided by WrongDiagnosis.com:

• 13,498 (7.2%) medical malpractice payment reports were made against physicians in Florida 1990-2003 (2003 Annual Report, National Practitioner Data Bank, US DHHS).
• 353 (7.9%) medical malpractice payment reports were made against nurses in Florida 1990-2003 (2003 Annual Report, National Practitioner Data Bank, US DHHS).
• 5.0% of medical malpractice payment reports made against dentists were in Florida 1990-2003 (2003 Annual Report, National Practitioner Data Bank, US DHHS).

If you or someone you love has been the victim of medical malpractice, you should contact a medical malpractice attorney immediately.

Has your illness been misdiagnosed?, CNN.com

Medical Malpractice in Florida: Related Medical Malpractice Statistics, Wrong Diagnosis?

Annals of Internal Medicine

Related Web Resources:

Medical Malpractice, Insurance Information Institute

Medical Malpractice/Litigation News, Medical News Today

Continue reading "5 Reasons to Suspect Wrongful Diagnosis and A Few Florida Medical Malpractice Statistics" »

Posted by Paige Trop & Ameen | Permalink | Email This Post

Posted In: Medical Malpractice

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