MedMalPodcast.com: Discovering the Needle Series. : Recent Episodes
Elisa Collins, NP-CLP
Interview podcast (for medical malpractice plaintiff trial attorney listeners), looking at how medical legal experts help trial attorneys solve and win their MedMal cases. FOR NURSES visit our partner website bit.ly/lncmentor if you are seeking info and guidance on becoming a legal nurse consultant (LNC). To come on the show go to medmalpodcast.com and click "be a guest". Attorneys, nurses, and testifying experts welcome!
This case with guest Joan Davis involves a patient who experienced complications with a nasogastric tube. Joan provides valuable insights into the standards of care, potential liabilities, and the crucial role of nurses in ensuring proper insertion and monitoring. The episode takes an unexpected turn as Joan reveals the complexities of interpreting X-rays and the importance of involving a radiologist in confirming the correct placement of medical devices. This episode sheds light on an often overlooked aspect of healthcare and legal considerations and the intricate interplay of where liability of nursing and medicine intersect on inpatient cases.
In this podcast episode, we have a special guest, Laurie Morgan, who shares her extensive clinical background as a nurse and her role as a legal nurse consultant. Our host, Elisa, explores how nurses can assist attorneys in personal injury cases, shedding light on the value they bring to the legal profession. Laurie discusses a specific personal injury case involving an older gentleman who experienced various injuries over the years, including an elevator accident that led to a neurogenic bladder condition. They delve into the importance of differentiating between pre-existing conditions and injuries caused by accidents, the role of nurses in analyzing medical records, and the financial impact of such injuries. Laurie's expertise in reviewing expert reports and providing valuable insights adds significant value to the case. Join us for this intriguing episode as we unravel the complexities of personal injury cases and the crucial role of nurses in the legal field.
In this special episode my guest and I discuss his super-specialty. Dr. Oami specializes in dermatopathology and cytopathology. Dr. Oami is a board-certified and fellowship-trained dermatopathologist and board-certified and fellowship-trained Cytopathologist as well as a board-certified and residency-trained n anatomic and clinical pathologist with over 25 years of clinical experience, and 20 years of experience reviewing medical-legal cases. We discuss how consulting experts can help testifying experts like Dr. Oami to spend less time on the case, dramatically reducing case expenses for attorneys.
In this episode, veteran charge nurse and supervisor nurse, Julie Reif and I talk about how a deep dive into the medical record led her to discover that the plaintiff's tale of their family member's death in the hospital was not the true story, and which hospital culture issues allowed her to level up the accountability for this tragic outcome to the hospital itself.
In this episode, I speak to Kristen Hull, a CRNA. CRNAs are the elite of nurses, and some of the brightest even among APRNs. Kristen explains what her role is in the OR, and how CRNAs may more readily identify issues in the O.R. procedures. We talk about issues affecting CRNAs specifically, and about documentation and continuity of care from the OR to recovery
Jack and I continue our discussion and talk about how nurses and doctors can and should document to reduce liability. We discuss why Jack feels it's so important as a trial attorney to connect with your client and to have a strong foundational "why" for what you do and recognize the impact that it has on, not just the patients and families, but on the healthcare industry as a whole and how that drives his practice.
Jack Cook, Nationally renowned Medmal attorney at Morgan & Morgan and I discuss why getting consulting experts involved early on a case is so key to building a strong case, and he provides tips for medmal attorneys on exactly how he uses his consulting experts.
Nicole McCutcheon is a wound care specialty nurse. She and I discuss how, when reviewing a case in their specialty, a specialty nurse will actually FEEL as if she was there, which can be very helpful in spotting issues. We also discuss the little known fact about how orders on specialty patients really are written.
Maggie Ortiz, the Advocate4nurses, and I discuss a medical malpractice plaintiff case in which there appeared to be "comedy of errors". Maggie was able to bring multiple actions--and inactions--of the nursing, hospital, and medical staff into question and to facilitate the job of the testifying experts by helping the attorney know which issues to bring to their attention and for which to ask for their testimony/opinion. Maggie is careful to remind our nurse listeners of their rights and the importance of protecting their license at all costs and if sued, to seek representation and an advocate!
Iman Abukar and I discuss why what may feel to a nurse to be a routine assessment is so important. Nurses are constantly assessing; much of it is subconscious and on autopilot. In each specialty and for each condition there are routine things to monitor and assess for. We are the providers' eyes and ears. We need to be on the lookout for when our assessment skills tell us that a complication may be occurring and pass the information on to the provider. By not following a standing order and routine nursing intervention for the floor, a missed that opportunity and tragedy struck.
Heidi Palmquist and I talk about nurses missing important doctors' orders and the critical danger of something as seemingly-harmless as IV fluids to the wrong population. A veteran LNC of 20+ years, Heidi also gives some tips to new LNCs, including the importance of keeping up on your knowledge of standards of care and continuing education!
Lisa D'Abrosca and I discuss why it's so important not to overlook nursing documentation, which can either condemn or exonerate, and why it's so important to keep an open mind about the narrative no matter what the story you receive tells you.
Connie Schaefer, an infection prevention specialty RN and I discuss the basics of pressure ulcers and nursing interventions to prevent them, as well as the challenges of inpatient COVID care. We discuss the difference between nursing and medical diagnoses and interventions.
While discussing a case of LACK of documentation, Dr. Tara Zacharzuk-Marciano, LNC, and I discuss why nurses are so hesitant to become testifying experts and how you can convince them.
In this episode we discuss the case of a surgery with a bad outcome. That happens, so how do you know when you have a case? In this case, the patient needed a revision surgery... was it the surgeon's fault, the patient's fault, or just the luck of the draw? We also discuss how legal nurse consultants can be ideal to delegate to for the locating and vetting of testifying experts for your case and why.
In this episode we talk about how nurses are so capable of finding the needle in the haystack because their unique knowledge and experience in understanding both nursing AND provider documentation is like having a magnet to draw over the hay. We discuss how important it is to not be fixated on the original narrative as provided by the plaintiff, who may be in the dark about the details, and only generates a narrative to explain their sixth sense that something was off... legal nurse consultants let the medical record TELL the story, not just corroborate it.
In this episode, we discuss how a horrible outcome can result from a series of medical errors, not just one. We also discuss how the healthcare providers who may, at first glance, seem to be the culprits, may actually be the heroes when the medical record is examined further. We also discuss how understanding the nuances of an individual patient's comorbidities can impact the standard of care for that unique patient.
This episode explores an example of the liability of monitoring relevant lab values when starting on or adjusting dosing of certain medications. In this episode you'll see how an RN was able to help the attorney identify what issues put the neuropsychiatric provider at liability so that they could be held accountable for the negligent death of an adolescent on mental health medications.
In this episode, we see an example of a known possible complication from a surgical treatment: hemorrhage. Informed consent doesn't give the providers license to provide substandard care. Complications happen, but when they do, during the post-operative period, when the patient is being monitored, and when clear signs of complication are evident and no action is taken, what looks like a simple bad outcome can be revealed as true negligence with the help of a nurse identifying when a reasonable and prudent person with similar training, education and experience should have recognized the complication and acted upon it. Remember, it's not always the procedure itself that is the malpractice incident, sometimes its the delay in response to complications.
In this episode we discuss the common medical negligence scenario of a nurse's failure to properly assess a patient's fall risk, resulting in injury. Falls are a "never event" according to all patient safety and regulatory bodies. Most falls are preventable with proper assessment of fall risk and the implementation of proper fall precautions. Nurses are aware of assessments required for various patient populations to ensure that their risk of fall and injury in the hospital setting is minimized. In this episode, our guest details how she was able to issue-spot the hospital fall case to help the attorney understand the standard of care violations and their contribution to the injury.