Medical professionals must use the minimum standard of care when they are treating people. When an older person is in a nursing home, the medical staff needs to be aware of their activity level. If they are just lying in bed, they may develop bedsores. Because older people have weaker immune systems, bedsores can be the source of life-threatening infections. This is what happened to one frail women. Nurses didn’t notice that she had bedsores. They then became the source of a serious infection. The woman died three days later. The family hired a Medical Malpractice Attorney in Wichita KS.
The lawyer reviewed the dead woman’s medical charts. While the nurses noted that the woman was only lying in bed, they didn’t note that they were having her position changed on a regular schedule. This is a minimum standard of care for a bedridden patient. Without constant movement, patients of any age can develop pressure sores, which is another name for bed sores. The certified nursing assistants who were helping her bathe said that they mentioned the bedsores to the nursing staff on several occasions. However, they did not escalate their concerns to the nursing home’s director of nursing, which is standard procedure.
The Medical Malpractice Attorney in Wichita KS filed a claim with the nurses’ insurance companies. It showed that she died from an infection that began in the pressure wound. If she had been treated properly, she would not have gotten the wound in the first place. However, once the wound manifested, a doctor should have been notified. He could have then prescribed the proper antibiotic. The nurses claim that even though they did not write down the fact that she was being moved regularly, she was. The insurance company also claimed that the nursing assistants should have left the nurses a written note about the bed sores, which is the standard procedure in that nursing home.
Eventually, the insurance company admitted that the nurses should have remembered the problem and gotten the woman the proper treatment. They agreed to a fair settlement with the family. Kevin Mark Smith is one of the Wichita lawyers who take on medical malpractice cases.
