School officials in Florida’s Volusia County School are insisting that a school nurse was perfectly correct in refusing to give a boy his inhaler during an asthma attack because a medical release form was not signed by a parent. By the time the mother arrived at the school, her son was passed out on the floor. She says that the nurse watched as her son, Michael Rudi, 17, collapsed.
The school dean found the inhaler in its original packaging with the student’s name and directions for its use. He seized the inhaler because of the absence of a form. When the boy began to have trouble breathing the mother was called to come into school. It is not clear why, if they could reach the mother, they could not get telephonic approval. More importantly, with the boy having breathing problems, the school insisted that it was still more important to get a form signed than help the child. Rudi is quoted as saying “[a]s soon as we opened up the door, we saw my son collapsing against the wall on the floor of the nurse’s office while she was standing in the window of the locked door looking down at my son, who was in full-blown asthma attack.”
Faced with this horrific situation, the Director of Student Health Services, Cheryl Selesky, still insists it was the parents’ fault for not being sure a new signed form was on file this year. There may have been a failure in supplying such a form, but that pales in comparison to the callous and irresponsible attitude to this teenager who was in obvious medical need. The school was previously made aware of the boy’s medical condition and yet stood there with an inhaler and an unsigned form in hand . . . but concluded the form was the more pressing matter.
It is also not clear why 911 was not called. The parents have filed child endangerment charges against the nurse. They also may want to consider a civil lawsuit against the school. Since the school appears primarily motivated by legal rather than medical considerations, a torts action may serve to concentrate the mind of officials.
Source: Orlando
mespo
What really makes me so damn mad is the fact that I was telling them for weeks that I had somehow broken my ribs lying in a hospital bed flat of my back. If I let it, it would eat me up.
You’re right Mespo. they have pushed me into a corner and I don’t have a choice. I have to repair my credit somehow and the days that I can’t get enough air to my lungs I feel like a disgruntled postal worker. and I’m scared to death of hospitals now. Not just what was done to me, but things I saw. Everyone should take someone that has a little medical knowledge with them. There are app. 100,000 deaths yearly due to hospital error. This has nothing to due with suing, or lawyering, but Barnes Hosp. is one of the top ten in the U.S. I spent months with two pulmonoligists every day. They call me there walking miracle. They also called my docs down here and let them have it. One more thing, of many actually, they mixed my meds up. My blood was so thin, it wouldn’t register on either machine at the doc office. You can’t mix just anything with Warfarin. I got pneumonia and they mixed the wrong antibiotic with the Warfarin. that’s why my blood was so thin. I don’t want to keep on and on Mespo, but I could. And I want to thank you. You’re right, I’m worth what I think I am.
mespo727272
As far as the nurse. I would like to think I would have given him the inhaler. I asked betykath and Malisha why he didn’t carry the inhaler with him, was it the school policy that he wasn’t allowed? But also,if I had a child that needed an emergency rescue inhaler, I would be in panic mode until I got the proper document signed.
belle:
Here’s a shocker: Almost every client in my office would rather not sue. They just get treated like you’ve been treated and they are sick of it and have no other recourse. Personally, I would sue all of them since they all got what they wanted except you:
Your doctor avoided his own incompetence;
The hospital billed you for crappy care;
The ins co got off the hook from paying a bill they owe and got your premium payment;
And you…well you got a calcified blood clot that will be with you for life that was totally avoidable with Warfarin and ultrasounds.
Request your records and then call your local bar association and get the best lawyer you can on a contingent fee basis and have at it.
You’re worth precisely what you think you are worth.
belle:
“My question is this, would u guys have sued if you were me?”
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I think you know the right answer here, Belle.
mespo727272
I don’t want to sue anyone. I know that’s probably hard to understand, and I’m sure I sound like a blithering idiot but I’m just not the suing kind. My thought was that I would sue for the price of hospital/doc bill. I tried to tell the lawyer that when we spoke, but he wouldn’t speak to me without an attorney, he actually hung up on me. Basically, I just want it taken off of my credit report and the bill paid. I lost my job and my ins. lost everything financially to be honest. I had to sign up on my social security/disability. I got it as soon as the s.s. law would allow. No denial, no hearing. and all I wanted to do was go back to work really.
I also called my former employee and told her about the situation, she told me she would handle the ins. co. herself. Still getting calls from the law firm, and she hasn’t contacted me nor returned my calls.
If I were going to sue anyone it would be the ins. co. And I would have to hire a lawyer for that. Right? Now tell me that’s not screwed up.
Belle, I have a dear friend who is a retired doctor and she is herself a Southern Belle and a battered woman (but she divorced the batterer long ago). If you want to contact me at MalishaGarcia@hushmail.com, I will forward your question to her, and she will help you figure out how to proceed. As is, the question has too many variables in it for anyone, layman, lawyer or physician, to answer it properly. Send me an e-mail that clearly identifies you in the SUBJECT line and I’ll send it along, OK?
Be well.
you are forgiven
Woosty:
“I had not made a distinction in the type of lawsuit.”
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True enough but we were talking about a medical malpractice situation from MINRIX’s example. Forgive me for assuming continuity of conversation.
lawyers LIKE to fight.
they get PAID to fight.
and process is not so much their forte….
“Your statement that an accusation of medical malpractice is financially rewarding is just silly.”~ Mespo
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and are you sloppy or do you make these statements on purpose?
Mespo,
if your responding to MY statement….”Here is MY PRESUMPTION:::::[based on personal experience so it is weighted….],
the legal pool has been so poor at monitoring and policing itself that there are now untold uber-aggressive and ethically challenged practitioners creating and fomenting discord BECAUSE the very ACT of ACCUSATION has become financially rewarding in the extreme……”
I had not made a distinction in the type of lawsuit.{ I have only been sued by lawyers who screwed up the probate of an Estate. ( And the bullying, btw, extended very far from the courthouse…)} If what you say is true of medical malpractice then good, because it really is sick to think that people make huge profits from the mistakes of professionals who practice to help other people. (But I still get perplexed over those 72 hour days…)
Also, I do remember seeing the commercial with the extraordinarlily well dressed lawyer laughing as he says …”it’s your money! why should you have to wait????!!!!” as he pitches his law firms willingness to write off everything if they lose your lawsuit..or get your previous ‘settlement’…..just as long as you sue!
It is the corporate law firms who game the system perhaps….but game they do.
Blouise:
You’re right about juries, of course.
Woosty:
I can almost hear your head exploding on this topic. Your statement that an accusation of medical malpractice is financially rewarding is just silly. The Center for State & Local Courts reports that only 20% of all malpractice cases result in ANY compensation for Plaintiffs — not adequate mind you, but “any” compensation. The average case costs Plaintiff’s lawyers about $50,000.00 out of their pockets so it’s a heck of a gamble.
For every 6 medical errors only 1 claim is filed. (The Agency for Health Care Administration; Division of Health Quality Assurance. Reported malpractice claims by district compared to reported adverse incidents 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999.) While medical costs have increased by 113 percent since 1987, the total amount spent on medical malpractice insurance has increased by just 52 percent over that time, less than half of medical services inflation. (Bureau of Labor Statistics – Medical Services CPI; Best’s Aggregates and Averages.)
The size of damage awards has been steady since 1991. The mean payout was $135,941 in 2001, up 8.7 percent from $125,000 in 2000. Over ten years, malpractice payouts have grown an average of 6.2 percent per year. That’s almost exactly the rate of medical inflation: an average of 6.7 percent between 1990 and 2001. (National Practitioner Data Bank and the Journal of Health Affairs, as quoted by Lorraine Woellert, Commentary: A Second Opinion on the Malpractice Plague, Business Week, March 3, 2003.)
Here’s more fun facts about the malpractice crisis from Public Citizen:
• Malpractice payouts by physicians and their insurers were a mere $4.5 billion in 2001 – less than 1 percent of the country’s overall health care costs of $1.4 trillion. (National Practitioner Data Bank, as quoted in Business Week, March 3, 2003.)
• In 2001, only 895 out of 16,676 payouts, or about 5 percent, topped $1 million. (National Practitioner Data Bank, as quoted in Business Week, March 3, 2003.)
• Premiums charged do not track losses paid, but instead rise and fall in concert with the state of the economy. When the economy is booming and investment returns are high, companies maintain premiums at modest levels; however, when the economy falters and interest rates fall, companies increase premiums in response. (J. Robert Hunter, Americans for Insurance Reform, “Medical Malpractice Insurance: Stable Losses/Unstable Rates,” October 10, 2002. See also: http://www.insurance-reform.org/StableLosses.pdf.)
• Only 5 percent of doctors (1 out of 20) are responsible for 54 percent of malpractice payouts. (National Practitioner Data Bank, Sept. 1, 1990 – Sept. 30, 2002.)
• Only 8 percent of doctors (1 out of 12) with 2 or more malpractice payouts have been disciplined by their state medical board. (National Practitioner Data Bank, Sept. 1, 1990 – Sept. 30, 2002.)
• Only 17 percent of doctors (1 out of 6) who have made 5 or more malpractice payouts have been disciplined by their state medical board. (National Practitioner Data Bank, Sept. 1, 1990 – Sept. 30, 2002.)
It’s like I thought and you’ve implied: you’re either so jaded by your own experience you can’t see straight or you’re quite thoroughly propagandized. Either way you’re showing us your gored ox and it ain’t pretty.
.
mespo,
I always like it when disputes go to trial and good cross is done on all witnesses. Juries usually find the truth of the matter amongst all the lies.
It’s been my experience on the two juries I served that courtroom emotionalism plays no role at all in deliberations. I know lawyers like to think it does, but juries tend to get stone cold once that door is closed.
C’mon, guys. Play nice.
and Mespo, you have demonstrated that you are willing to use trickery and lies to win your ‘argument’….so I’m guessing you are the kind of prick that supports the LAID by force movement….
“No, I can’t but the persons most knowledgeable about the presumed case could and apparently they paid. Isn’t that proof enough?” If they didn’t pay why would MINRIX bring it up at all. Bottom line it’s not your story or mine so neither of us know the facts, and judging by MINRIX’s comment neither does he/she.~Mespo
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this is so out of left field regarding responding to a presented scenario on a blog that I don’t even know how to respond.
But I’ll give it a shot…
you say,
“No, I can’t but the persons most knowledgeable about the presumed case could and apparently they paid. Isn’t that proof enough?”
to that I say, fooey! you are graspng at straws and according to TRIX’s story :
>I remember the story of a baby in the neonatal intensive care unit. The child was born premature. As such, the lungs were not sufficiently developed. In order to provide enough oxygen, the levels had to be increased to the point that the baby lost her eyesight. The alternative was to let the baby die.
Of course the hospital and physicians were sued. It was their actions that caused the baby to be blinded. The alternative was to let the baby die.
If you only knew one side, you would only know that the baby was blind because of the care provided by the hospital and their physicians.
It is foolish to discount the other side of the story until you know what it is<
the presumption is that the physicians lost the suit and paid.
the presumption of the doctors, perhaps, is that the family would not have preferred a dead baby to a blind one….
Here is MY PRESUMPTION:::::[based on personal experience so it is weighted….],
the legal pool has been so poor at monitoring and policing itself that there are now untold uber-aggressive and ethically challenged practitioners creating and fomenting discord BECAUSE the very ACT of ACCUSATION has become financially rewarding in the extreme. Without adequate proof, without adequate process, without adequate information the lawyers are like rogue immune cells attacking the very body they are trained and sworn to protect.
LAIDS= Lawyer Actioned Immune Dysfunctional System
[now in this presumption you MAY call me calloused…I had a taste of getting LAID so I ain't no virgin no more…]
Blouise:
Personally I like the mention of several eyewitnesses who directly refute the school’s statement about the boy not collapsing and being monitored. The one hero is the unnamed school official who ordered the nurse to so the right thing.
Woosty:
“This scenario did not give the babies relative biologic capabilities ie: age…so you CAN NOT SAY whether ANY remedial measures would have been effective or are approriate.”
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No, I can’t but the persons most knowledgeable about the presumed case could and apparently they paid. Isn’t that proof enough? If they didn’t pay why would MINRIX bring it up at all. Bottom line it’s not your story or mine so neither of us know the facts, and judging by MINRIX’s comment neither does he/she.
The family first demanded that the Sheriff’s office arrest the nurse. The Sheriff’s office refused to do so. Then the family hired an atty.
Here’s the link for the atty’s statement ….
http://www.lippmanlawoffice.com/news/new-client-michael-rudi-responds-to-the-volusia-county-school-board/
Any of what he has to say sound familiar?
I particularly like the way he described his client’s mother’s failure to sign the form required by state law … “perceived technicality regarding paperwork”