While cared for by a physician or a nurse patients typically have an expectation that the physician or nurse either (1) has the know-how and expertise to make a proper diagnosis of whatever is wrong with their health and suggest best treatment or (2) is being supervised by a senior physician or nurse who does. According to the second possibility, they can gain experience while treating actual patients if their mistakes are caught and rectified so that patients are not harmed. After all, they go to school, study, and devote many, many hours learning useful understanding by real experience. Yet before they achieve an appropriate amount of experience they will probably make mistakes. And returning to expectations people want to be confident that any such mistake will not hurt them.

The learning curve is steep but it does exist. While in the training period these new physicians and nurses will inevitably make errors. Although many errors will have minor, if any, consequences some will cause severe harm or possibly in the death of a patient. That is why they need supervision by more experienced doctors and nurses who can note and rectify the errors. Else, even a single mistake that is not rectified by the supervising physician or nurse can result in tragic outcomes.

Recently a claim was reported that described how a pregnant woman went to the hospital with nausea and vomiting. On admission a nurse trainee examined her and monitored her condition. The nurse trainee connected the mother to a fetal heart rate monitor to check on the unborn baby. The strip showed that the woman’s unborn baby was in severe fetal distress. It was that nurse trainee, however, instead of an experienced doctor or nurse, who read the results of the fetal heart rate monitor. The nurse trainee incorrectly read the strip as normal. Lacking any supervision by a doctor or a registered nurse, the nurse trainee failed to take any action to protect the health of the baby and just told the expectant mother to go home.

Three days after the infant was delivered as scheduled. She had to go through therapy. She could not eat on her own and so needed to be fed with a feeding tube. For 4 years she had to live with seizures. And she died from complications of the cerebral palsy. She was survived by her father and mother and by her two older brothers. One was eleven and the other was sixteen. The law firm that filed a lawsuit on their behalf reported that the case went to trial and that at the end of the trial the jury returned a verdict in favor of the parents for $4,400,000.

The case examined above illustrates the need for close supervision of nurse trainees by a doctor or experienced nurse. Although an experienced doctor or nurse can make an error and misread the results of a fetal heart rate monitor, it is much more likely that a nurse trainee will make that sort of error. An experienced doctor or obstetrics nurses will probably have seen hundreds or even thousands of fetal heart rate monitor strips and honed the ability to tell when it indicates an abnormal pattern that needs immediate attention. A mistake by a nurse trainee and the failure to adequately supervise the nurse trainee, as in the case above, may lead to a medical malpractice claim.