Are physicians now to blame for patients’ choices that go wrong?
It will fall to a Summit County jury to decide whether the mother was responsible because of the beliefs she held and the choices she made in opting for a home birth, or a physician is to blame because she failed to inform the mother of the risks involved.In opening statements Thursday morning, plaintiff’s attorney James Casey said Dr. Kristin Trump is to blame because she never told the mother that she was at risk.
Marilena DiSilvio, the doctor’s lawyer, said the physician should not be held accountable “for choices she didn’t make, and for choices she counseled against.”
Related posts:
- A home birth gone wrong: Doctors sued for $5 million
- A doctor is sued, and blogs his malpractice trial
- The wrong doctor sued, and still paying the price
- A doctor sends home a child who is unconscious
- Post-birth
- A mother gives birth in the burn unit
- A baby’s remains is lost, the OB is sued
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So a patient is advised not to deliver at home but does so against medical advice with adverse consequences to the child, or so we are led to believe. Now after the fact, the mother, via a neat proxy arrangement of a court-appointed guardian wants to blame the doctor for what, exactly?
“It’s your fault doctor; you didn’t persuade me enough.”
Is that it?
And there are those who will argue that patients are entitled to make their own decisions about what they will have done to or for them. O.K. . . . .
I suppose that if the outcome were the same in hospital, the doctor would be blamed and sued. And if the birth were uncomplicated at home with the midwife, the doctor would be disparaged as being unknowledgeable and self-serving in his caution.
The mother elected this method AMA; why is the “court-appointed representative” not also naming her in the suit?
Oh, that’s right, she hasn’t got malpractice insurance. And good luck getting a settlement from her homeowner’s policy.
She had a previous caesarean; the present baby was estimated to be 5 kg or more.
That means she actually could try for a vaginal delivery if she so desired, but this could take place safely only in a hospital setting where emergency caesarean could be performed with obstructed labor; laparotomy could be done for uterine rupture, or at least an experienced obstetrician at hand to deliver impacted shoulders.
This woman clearly has acted against medical advice, in fact against all reason and all common knowledge. Even my old mother would advice against this sort of reckless behavior.
And then this nonsense about early clamping of the cord: That pice of nformation alone tells me that this woman is an altie of the fourth kind (the “I would rather die” is the third kind – she is “I would rather my kids died” – kind, like the Watchtower idiots).
If this case is even brought to trial, there is really nothing left to salvage from the justice system in the US. Just throw it all away, scrap the constitution and start all over again with clean sheets and new crayons.
Just one more reason why we must defend against any attack on our right to choose what patients to serve. I wonder if this would have happened if the doctor had done what some people consider would have made the doc a jerk and sent a formal discharge letter with details upon realizing that the patient intended to reject her delivery services.
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