NYU-Langone - Infant falls out of incubator

Nurses Headlines

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LOWER EAST SIDE, Manhattan (WABC) --

A baby suffered a cracked skull from a fall in the preemie ward at an area hospital, with officials blaming mechanical failure on an incubator door. But the family is having a hard time with that explanation.

The Bronx mother says it simply does not make any sense that a tightly-wrapped baby would roll out of an incubator, even if the door did suddenly pop open. But that's what she says the hospital is saying caused her baby's serious head injury.

The Investigators: Mom's questions linger after infant's skull fractured at NYU Langone in New York | abc7ny.com

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Specializes in Emergency/Trauma/Critical Care Nursing.

Hmm... I didn't realize 2wk old premature infants were capable of rolling... guess I'll have to go re-read my developmental milestones chapter from nursing school lol. I'd be angry as hell too, this reeks of some kind of cover up to me.

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Specializes in M/S, LTC, Corrections, PDN & drug rehab.

What a bad cover up.

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IIRC the cutoff age in NYS to sue for malpractice/damages resulting from injury at birth is until the child reached 21 years of age, or maybe it is 18? Either way the limit is way up there so NYU-Langone is on the hook for potentially a huge sum of money.

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Specializes in NICU.

I've seen preemies end up in all sorts of positions (and places) inside an isolette.

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Specializes in OB-Gyn/Primary Care/Ambulatory Leadership.
IIRC the cutoff age in NYS to sue for malpractice/damages resulting from injury at birth is until the child reached 21 years of age, or maybe it is 18? Either way the limit is way up there so NYU-Langone is on the hook for potentially a huge sum of money.

I don't understand your point in this post. This just happened a month ago, so I'm not really clear on why you're mentioning an 18-year statute of limitations on malpractice lawsuits?

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Specializes in OB-Gyn/Primary Care/Ambulatory Leadership.
I've seen preemies end up in all sorts of positions (and places) inside an isolette.

Typically isolettes have arm holes, or sides that go up or flap down. The infant could not have possibly slipped out an arm hole, which means that someone left a side down, no?

With regards to the baby being "tightly wrapped" (quote in OP) - typically when an infant is in an isolette, they're not wrapped at all. It's only when they're in an open bassinet that they're swaddled.

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I don't understand your point in this post. This just happened a month ago, so I'm not really clear on why you're mentioning an 18-year statute of limitations on malpractice lawsuits?

Because it means this mother and or her child have a *very* long window to file a malpractice lawsuit based upon this incident.

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Specializes in NICU.
Typically isolettes have arm holes, or sides that go up or flap down. The infant could not have possibly slipped out an arm hole, which means that someone left a side down, no?

The port holes have a mechanism that has to be pushed or manipulated in some way for them to open. If it is broken they will open if merely pulled (or pushed on from inside).

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Specializes in OB-Gyn/Primary Care/Ambulatory Leadership.
Typically isolettes have arm holes, or sides that go up or flap down. The infant could not have possibly slipped out an arm hole, which means that someone left a side down, no?

The port holes have a mechanism that has to be pushed or manipulated in some way for them to open. If it is broken they will open if merely pulled (or pushed on from inside).

By port holes, you're talking about the arm holes, right? I can't imagine an infant being able to manipulate itself through that.

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By port holes, you're talking about the arm holes, right? I can't imagine an infant being able to manipulate itself through that.

Oh I've seen them smashed up against them so it could happen if the latch was broken (they're really pretty flimsy) but the actual probability of that scenario is pretty slim. Fairly certain the side of the isolette was left open which is easy to do. If the door simply fell open it would make a pretty loud crash that would be hard to miss.

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Specializes in NICU.

A series of events would have had to occur for this to happen. First, the nurse would have had to position the baby on it's side next to the side of the isolette. Second, the nurse would have had to close the side without ensuring that both sides were latched. Third, the baby would have had to roll onto it's back, leaning against the side causing the side to fall open and fall to the floor before someone could react to the loud crash of the side falling open.

The baby would have to do a lot of maneuvering to line up with an open porthole to fall through one of them (I can't imagine a preemie being able to commando crawl) , if it is possible to fit a 3.5 pound baby through a porthole.

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