Malpractice

[grad13]

Are nurse anesthetists sued significantly more than nurses who practice in other fields? Is it a rare occurrence to be sued or does it happen often in nurse anesthesiology?

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

Here is a good article from AJN:

http://www.nursingcenter.com/library/journalarticle.asp?article_id=423284

[wtbcrna, MSN, DNP, CRNA]

Are nurse anesthetists sued significantly more than nurses who practice in other fields? Is it a rare occurrence to be sued or does it happen often in nurse anesthesiology?

It isn't uncommon to be named in a lawsuit as a nurse anesthetist, but only a few of those will ever settle or goto court. Most cases are dismissed against the nurse anesthetist. In general I would say that we aren't sued anymore than other nurse specialities, but our practice deals with a lot more variables and at times higher risk than many other fields of nursing.

We know that for a fact that the rate of nerve injury is the same for women who deliver without and anesthetic intervention and for those that get epidurals, but we are still often blamed for any paresthesia or loss of sensory function even if it is inconsistent with typical presentations of epidural/spinal injuries. It is same in surgery. I have been blamed by the surgeon for resulting residual nerve deficit after a block even though the site of injury was directly under the tourniquet, and in a pattern that would have been extremely difficult to be caused by the block.

All in all nurse anesthesia is one of the safest advanced nursing specialities, and continues to have relatively low malpractice rates.

That is very round about way of answering your question....

[Whispera, MSN, RN]

If you look at the websites for malpractice insurance and see the variation in what malpractice insurance costs, between specialties, that will give you an idea of what specialties are considered more risky than others...

[Nursx2]

I am currently involved in a case in which I am specifically named in litigation in medical malpractice for a flash fire case. BTW, a note of interest is that the MDA, who was "medically directing" me at the time, is and was never named.

A word of wisdom from someone who is living it, practice like you are in a CRNA only group, cause when it hits the fan, you will be on your own!!!

[foraneman]

Here is a good article from AJN:

http://www.nursingcenter.com/library/journalarticle.asp?article_id=423284

From the linked article:

"The NPDB classifies RNs into four categories: nonspecialized RNs, nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives, and nurse practitioners. According to the data bank, RNs have been responsible for 3,615 malpractice payments over the history of the NPDB (only those cases reported to the NPDB between September 1, 1990, and December 31, 2001, are included). Nonspecialized RNs made the most malpractice payments (2,311 or 63.9%), followed by nurse anesthetists (820 or 22.7%), and nurse midwives (296 or 8.2%). Nurse practitioners made the fewest malpractice payments (188 or 5.2%)"

To put this in some perspective, there are nearly 40,000 CRNAs in the United States.

[yourgoodneighbor]

Actually between 1990 and 2001 there were about 26,000 CRNAs (fig.4) so 820/26,000 equals 3% getting sued over a course of 10 years?

Seems worth it.

Figure.4 

[BigPappaCRNA]

It makes sense that CRNAs would be in litigation more than Midwifes, because we see tremendously more patients and do more cases than they do.  Additional, if you look at insurance rates, and actuary tables for insurance, there is no difference in insurances costs for MDA or CRNA.  So...people will make mistakes, people will sue, it is the nature of the game.