Pressure injuries should be avoided at all costs. 

The costs of pressure injuries are numerous, but one area of major concern is when their existence results in a lawsuit. These suits typically allege the pressure injury was the result of poor nursing and overall care of the patient and/or resulted in a patient’s death.

Jacqueline Genesio identifies several lawsuits that resulted in significant verdicts in the article “Pressure Ulcers Are Easy Pickings For Lawsuits.”

As she points out, not only can a verdict result in compensatory damages (money paid to compensate the patient for pain and suffering and lost wages, as examples), but also can include punitive damages.

In one 2015 case, Genesio reported an Arizona jury awarded $2.5 million in compensatory damages and $16.7 million in punitive damages to the estate of an 86-year-old woman.

Many of you have provided expert testimony in lawsuits in your own state, or other states, concerning wound care and whether that care was consistent with the applicable standard of care and standards of practice in that situation.

By Nancy J. Brent, MS, JD, RN

The following Arizona case — Rasor and Donald Miller, Wife and Husband, v. Northwest Hospital LLC — determined if a wound care nurse expert could testify to the cause of a wound sustained by the plaintiff (patient).

The female patient had open-heart surgery at the hospital and received an intra-aortic balloon pump “threatened through her femoral artery.” This required immobilization of her leg.

The patient was in the ICU for several days and the nursing staff discovered a pressure injury on her coccyx that reached stage IV and required 31 debridement procedures.

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