Partner Elizabeth Calora and associate William McClure recently authored articles for WSAJ Trial News, a publication produced by the Washington State Association for Justice. Both articles appeared in the publication’s special focus edition on medical negligence.
Elizabeth’s article is titled “Pediatric Sepsis: An Underappreciated Risk to Our Children.” In her piece, Elizabeth tackles the issue of undiagnosed sepsis in pediatric patients. She describes the standard of care health care professionals must abide by when caring for a pediatric patient, including the actions providers should take to identify and treat sepsis. She then details deviations from the standard of care, which include such actions as ignoring the sepsis trigger/prompt from the EMR, failure to obtain repeat vitals, not considering the impact of prior NSAIDs on the child’s temperature when assessing for sepsis, and poor training of nurses regarding risk of sepsis, among other actions. She also tackles the issue of proving causation in medical negligence cases involving infection as well as tools and tips for discovery.
To read Elizabeth’s article, click here.
William’s article is titled “Ditching ‘Hospitals’ in favor of ‘Health Care Entities’ within the Corporate Negligence Doctrine.” In his piece, William discusses the ambiguity of the term “hospital” as it applies to a patient’s pursuit of a common law corporate negligence claim in Washington state. For the purposes of these types of claims, Washington has yet to define the term “hospital,” leaving open the opportunity for plaintiffs’ lawyers to encourage the courts to shift the verbiage toward the broader term “health care entities.” With such an expansion of the doctrine’s language, William writes, patients would have a better opportunity to be made whole when pursuing medical and corporate negligence claims against a diverse range of health care providers.
To read William’s article, click here.