Patient Gets Blood Drawn, Nurse Hits Nerve, Patient Wins $2.5 Million Verdict!

A medical malpractice case in another state resulted in a $2.5 million medical malpractice case for the fifty-year-old patient. What happened was a nurse when to draw some blood from the patient. However, the nurse struck a nerve when she was drawing that blood for a pre-operation procedure.

Immediately, the patient screamed out in pain-wouldn’t you?! However, the nurse KEPT THE NEEDLE IN his skin instead of immediately withdrawing it. As a result, the patient suffered from what is called Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome. And it has been opined that he has permanent nerve damage because of it. Therefore, he had to go for ANOTHER surgery to have a device implanted into his spine to control the impulses of pain.

The jury awarded $2.5 million after a brief four day-yet very intense-jury trial. It has been called a David versus Goliath trial.

How scary is this?

We’ve all been stuck dozens of times with needles to draw blood or get seasonal flu shots, or even IVs. A quick scan of the internet and I found many aggrieved patients who also had nerves hit during one of these quick and usually painless procedure. However, there did not appear to be any recent studies of how often a nerve was injured in a blood test/donation. The closest one, from 1996, found that 1 in 6,300 donors suffered a nerve injury; now that’s actually pretty high!

Also searching the internet, there seems to be a pretty good track record of receiving compensation in a lawsuit from this medical malpractice. Sometimes technicians receive only a few DAYS of training into a fake arm before they begin sticking patients. When this happens, a technician is also trained to IMMEDIATELY remove the needle and then seek other help; something that the nurse CLEARLY did not do here. And if it happens to you, one doctor noted that if a patient acts quickly and goes to the right doctors, there is a lot that can be done to limit the damage.

Again, cases like this-sadly-are not unique. Do you know someone this happened to? Your time is ticking to file a lawsuit! In some cases, as short as two and a half years from the date of the injury!! I also welcome your phone call on my toll-free cell at 1-866-889-6882 or you can drop me an e-mail at jfisher@fishermalpracticelaw.com . You are always welcome to request my FREE book, The Seven Deadly Mistakes of Malpractice Victims, at the home page of my website at www.protectingpatientrights.com.