Do you trust a hospital to take care of you? If you were staying in a hospital and your life relied on an alarm and a response to the sounding of that alarm, how confident are you that you would get the care that you need in order to save your life? Maybe you’d rather not know the statistics or the problems plaguing private and public hospitals these days. As much as people would like to believe that medical workers are miracle workers, at the end of the day they are all human and susceptible to the same human weaknesses that everyone else is. Unfortunately, you or someone that you love may be injured or even pass away as a result of this type of malpractice.
It may also worry you to know that there is such a thing as alarm fatigue. Alarm fatigue has come up in the news quite a bit due to its part in patients dying and experiencing complications as a result of their alarms not getting enough attention. Alarm fatigue is a type of medical malpractice. Staff can become desensitized or even ignore medical alerts as a result of all the sounds that are going on around them. As a result, patients and their alarms do not get attended to. It’s a serious problem and there have been multiple hospitals that have had deaths due to a failure of attentions to alarm, such as a case at Mass Gen Hospitals where an incredible ten nurses on duty admitted to failing to hear alarms going off at the central nurses’ station that indicated the patient’s heart rate was dropping.
That hospital ended up settling the medical malpractice claim by the family for just under a million dollars. Many people related to someone who gets injured or passes as a result of an ignored alarm do not know that they have the option to sue for this type of situation. If you are in this situation, you need to consult an experienced medical malpractice attorney to see what your options are. This hospital implemented multiple improvements related to alarms after the suit as well Your suit could make hospitals safer for patients everywhere. Other hospitals have started sending warning to nursing staff’s cell phones where are low batteries and paging when there are changes in patients that are life threatening.
When it comes to hospitals in Florida, they are certainly not immune to this phenomenon. In a high stress environment where there is constant stimulation, it is entirely possible that this type of medical malpractice could occur. Hospitals are addressing the problem all over the nation, but are they doing enough? The Joint Commission and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are expected to make recommendations for the medical field– but will these recommendations really have an effect?
If you need an experienced medical malpractice attorney to handle your case, consult The Law Offices of Payas, Payas & Payas. They have experience in handling medical malpractice cases and will work to get you the best possible results.
