I think that that safety issue is most directly the responsibility of the nurses, but legally, as they are under physician supervision, the case for resident repsonsibility can be made–but I don’t know any OR nurses taking orders from residents on how to do their jobs.

At a practical level, I think that the residents bear at least some responsibility–if they were in the room still, what were they doing if not attending to the patient and putting out a hand to stop her from falling shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Is one of the above tables probably what was used in this case? Does anyone have a better picture?

Money can’t return a relative, or undo suffering. It’s a literal price for the suffering and loss caused however, and an incentive to handle patients with the appropriate degree of care.

From the article –
” the hospital did its own “root cause analysis” and determined that the doctors and nurses in the operating room were preoccupied with their own tasks and that the “removal of the . . . safety belt from the patient was not verbally communicated.”

The hospital has adopted a protocol requiring all nurses and doctors put their hands on the patient before removing the safety belt and making sure that there are people on both sides of the table.”

Since the patient was near the end of her days, the wrongful death suit will have lower value. Damages for her own suffering don’t extinguish with her death, however, and the circumstances of the death were terrible and avoidable.

The physicians were present and still responsible for her proper care – and could have assisted her not falling through the table. Assume they were not and examination of the facts would exculpate them – it is still the attorney’s duty to name them in order to investigate their cuplability.

This should remind us that the courts consider residents real physicians with real responsibilities – even if the academic medical establishment treats them like cheap servants.