Similarly to doctors, nurses in Philadelphia and the U.S, in general, may also fall victim to medical malpractice charges. In hospitals, nurses are assistants to the doctors. Therefore, you may assume that when something goes wrong, it is the doctors who are in charge that bare the fault.
Nurses, too, are medical practitioners with licenses and with a sworn duty to provide patients with professional care and standards. Even though the rules are quite different from those which bind doctors, they too have a professional obligation to maintain.
Additionally, there are times when the nurse is in charge of a patient’s care without oversight from a doctor. A good example is nurses that do home health care services, though they may be executing the doctor’s instructions, they work independently for their home care agencies. When a nurse fails to execute their duties properly, they may be found to be negligent.
Some of the malpractices that you may sue a nurse for include:
- Not responding when a patient calls for assistance
- Feeding a patient the wrong food or drink
- Not taking the vital signs during the right time
- Not keeping time with the medication of the patient
When there is negligence in caring for a patient, you may sue the nurse directly and the agency in which she works. The employer takes liability due to the negligence of the nurse; a situation referred to as vicarious liability.
By going after the employer of the nurse, your lawyer will try to push for the maximum insurance cover that is possible. If the nurse does not have any coverage, but the employer has ample insurance coverage, your attorney may sue the employer under the context of vicarious liability.
You should not take this as legal advice. However, it may help you understand what to do when you encounter nurse negligence.
