Doctors and nurses go through years of schooling and practice to develop the required knowledge and skill base to help patients. People appreciate that new physicians and nurses must train on patients to gain the necessary expertise. We expect that they will make errors along the way. Patients do not typically think about this as they simply expect that the doctor treating them is thoroughly competent. That safety net comes in the form of supervision by experienced physicians and nurses.

The learning curve is steep yet it does exist. During the training period these new doctors and nurses will undoubtedly make errors. Although many errors will have minor, if any, implications some will result in serious harm or possibly in the fatality of a patient. That is why they need supervision by more senior physicians and nurses who can catch and correct the errors. Otherwise, even a single mistake that is not rectified by the supervising physician or nurse can lead to tragic results.

Recently a case was reported that revealed how a pregnant woman went to the hospital with complaints of nausea and vomiting. While at the hospital the woman was monitored by a nurse trainee. It was the nurse trainee, rather than a registered nurse or a doctor who interpreted the strip from the fetal heart rate monitor. Interpreting the strip as normal and deciding that there was no danger to the unborn baby, the nurse trainee discharged the woman. In reality, the baby’s oxygen supply was gravely impeded and that the baby’s health was in grave danger..

The child was delivered 3 days following the hospital visit. Despite the fact that the newborn lived she had significant brain damage. She developed cerebral palsy. She had persistent seizures. The little girl spent the following 4 years of her life with recurring seizures, undergoing therapy and had to be fed through a feeding tube as she was not able to eat on her own, before dying due to complications from her cerebral palsy. She was survived by her parents and by her two older brothers. One was 11 and one was 16. The law firm that filed a lawsuit on their behalf reported that the case was tried and that at the end of the trial the jury returned a verdict in favor of the parents for $4,400,000.

The lawsuit discussed above exemplifies the need for close supervision of nurse trainees by a doctor or experienced nurse. True, even experienced doctors and nurses can sometimes incorrectly read a fetal heart rate strip. A nurse trainee just has not read a sufficient number of monitor strips to develop the appropriate degree of competency in interpreting one. An error by a nurse trainee and the failure to properly supervise the nurse trainee, as in the case above, may lead to a medical malpractice claim.