Death after two-hour ER wait ruled homicide

i think a good lawyer could spin it and get a conviction on involuntary manslaughter (criminal negligence).

involuntary manslaughter is the killing of a person when there is no intent to kill. criminal negligence is when a duty exists and a person fails to carry out that duty causing death (eg. a parent neglects their child, causing the child to die). so i can see the potential for this type of conviction.

the question is...who would they convict? the nurse who triaged the patient or the doctor who failed to see the patient in time?

Don't you mean deadly assessment? I see nothing interesting about it.

[quote=earle58]it does sound ominous.
semi-emergent w/classic presentation of mi?
interesting assessment.

Don't you mean deadly assessment? I don't see anything interesting about it.

This is going to happen more and more in the coming years.... until the ptb and the medical establishment get the guts to say "No, Mr./Mrs. Whinybutt. Your sinus infection is NOT an emergency - call your PCP in the morning. Oh, you don't have a PCP? Find one.... in the morning. Good bye."

Also, the rash of Un/under-insured people using the ER as a PCP HAS to stop - like right now!

It is unconscionable that people with emergent conditions like MI, SOB, or even a serious lac requiring sutures have to wait for hours for treatment because our ER's are crammed full of the slightly sick, chronically lame, or the insufferably lazy. Oops! I almost forgot: the severe LBP x 3 months that HAS to have some IV narcs RIGHT NOW!

Gimme a break.

Got to agree with you Timothy. Negligence, yes. Malpractice, yes. Homicide? No.

It sure sounds like negligent homicide to me. This is hardly an obscure dx we're talking about here. There is precious little point to having a triage system if the most emergent cases aren't treated first. It is hard to understand what part of an MI is ''semi'' anything!

Not to transfer any blame here, but did the daughter who was with her noice that she was unresponsive or slumped over??? That might have changed the situation.

Also, every hour in our ED a tech comes out to take vitals on the triaged patients, at least there would have been some human contact if that were to have occured.

No homicide, criminal negligence, definitely.

This article doesn’t paint the whole story and I’m not yet a nurse so I really can’t make to great of a speculation.

I do know that we don’t know what happened in triage. We don’t know what was exchanged between nurse and patient or if an EKG was done. I do know from personal experience that people who are having heart attacks can be in complete denial. Recently my father had a heart attack with the classical symptom. He didn’t believe he was having a heart attack until they got him out of the Cath Lab and the Dr. who put did the angioplasty told him he had a heart attack. I don’t know how normal this is but I also know that the EKG didn’t appear to be abnormal until the third time they did it (just before they were going to discharge him to home) and even then it was barely abnormal. The doctor who performed the angioplasty told us that he completely expected to find no blockages; they were just taking him into the Cath Lab as a precaution.

I guess what my story is trying to illustrate is that this article is rather vague and we don’t know the whole story. Either way I don’t think anyone should be charged with homicide.

I'll be watching the outcome of this.

Just reading the story makes me think that no matter how it turns out for this nurse, worrying about outcomes like this will only push potential nurses into safer fields.

The article may have been vague, but the coroner has already ruled this death a homicide. I am sure s/he had the facts we're short on or wouldn't have made such a finding.