Providers should begin to educate certain patients and their families about “unavoidable” pressure ulcers to help fend off related litigation, two medical malpractice attorneys recommended in the National Law Review.
Emily L. Fernandez and Alan B. Friedberg of Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker proposed advising patients and documenting the process with a standardized form, even though it is not a liability waiver.
“Many pressure ulcers are unavoidable, but patients-turned-litigants do not seem to know that fact even when they develop a pressure injury incident to treatment that saved their lives,” the attorneys wrote in June. “A jury should not be the first to learn that a patient’s ulcers were unavoidable. … The patient should be the first to know, in real time, and preferably before a pressure ulcer ever develops.”
While they targeted their June 5 article toward hospitals, the same advanced notification principle could be applied to nursing homes, which often treat patients with costly and hard-to-heal, hospital-acquired pressure ulcers or end-of-life wounds known as Kennedy terminal ulcers.
From the July/August 2024 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
