There are two things patients absolutely expect from their physicians. This is even more so when the patient is placing the health of her unborn baby in the hands of the physician. First, the physician needs to listen to the patient's intuition. As the pregnancy progresses the woman learns what is normal in her pregnancy and what is not. Ignoring complaints and her sense that something is wrong, without definitive evidence to the contrary, can lead to tragic consequences.
Second, the physician needs to recognize and follow up on signs consistent with a serious complication. This is what their education, training and experience is supposed to give them the ability to do. It is a natural parental instinct to want, to hope, that nothing bad happens to your baby and he or she is born healthy. It can feel like a terrible betrayal of the trust placed on physician that he or she will be able to tell the difference between a normally progressing pregnancy and a complication that threatens the life of the unborn baby.
Then there is the reality of just how badly things can go wrong. Consider the case of a woman in the seventh month of her pregnancy, was admitted at the hospital by her physician with complaints of back pain, abdominal pain, and persistent vaginal bleeding. The physician concluded that the woman was not in labor and that the tracings from the fetal heart rate monitor were reassuring and showed no signs of fetal distress. The physician discharged the woman even thought she continued to complain of abdominal pain and continued to experience vaginal bleeding. The woman was thus discharged without a full work up to determine the cause of the pain and bleeding.
Later that same afternoon, after the abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding increased, she went to her physician's office. At that point, the physician then had her transported to the hospital for delivery. She had massive hemorrhaging on the way to the hospital. Once at the hospital they were going to perform an emergency C-section but the baby was stillborn before they
could. The mother required transfusions for blood loss. The cause of the pain and vaginal bleeding was determined to be a placental abruption. The law firm that handled this matter reported that it went to trial and achieved a jury verdict in the amount of $1.651 million on behalf of the parents.
In this case, the woman felt that what was happening to her was not normal. She knew that something had changed in her pregnancy. Her intuition told her something was wrong and so she went to the hospital to see her physician. But the physician ignored the very complaints she went in for. Instead, the physician focused on two other factors - whether she was in labor and whether there was an abnormality in the fetal heart rate. The physician took a negative finding to these two as sufficient to determine that everything was fine.
Certainly, an abnormal heart rate could have been a sign of a serious complication requiring proper follow up. But so were the woman's complaints of pain and bleeding. Yet they were totally dismissed - in effect, the physician also dismissed the patient's intuition.
The physician also apparently never even considered a placental abruption in the differential diagnosis for the pain even though together they form a classic presentation of a placental abruption. This is not how a doctor is supposed to evaluate a patient's situation. It was not until the situation worsened later in the day that the physician had her go to the hospital for an emergency C-section.
Cases like this happen in hospitals and doctor's officers all too frequently. When the health of an unborn baby is involved the consequences of such deviations from what the patient expects of the physician can lead to the loss of the baby's life. And the physician's actions may not just be a deviation from the patient's expectations, they may also be a deviation from the standard of care the physician is supposed to provide. When that is the case the family may have a medical malpractice/wrongful death claim against the physician.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney focused on complex injury cases, including birth injury medical malpractice cases. You can learn more about Placental Abruption and Medical Malpractice Cases at his website. www.birth-injury-malpractice-law.com.
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