Miami Medical Malpractice Law Blog

Nursing homes play an integral role in elder care. When Florida families cannot care for elderly loved ones, they rely on nursing homes to provide the oversight and attention needed. Unfortunately, nursing home neglect is a terrifying reality. Those facilities families have come to rely on sometimes fail to give necessary medication, feed adequate nutrition and provide proper attention. These shortcomings can result in illnesses such as malnutrition and infections caused by bed sores.

When we place loved ones in a nursing home, friends and family expect that the facility and its staff will provide quality care to the fullest extent. Yet, nursing homes are not immune to accidents, neglect and medical malpractice. Patients may fall victim to preventable slip and falls, unnecessary bed sores and medication errors.

These incidents know no borders. So, Miami, Florida, residents should be aware of nursing home neglect and medical malpractice occurrences across the country that can illustrate when patients are improperly treated. One of these tragic events happened recently in Minnesota.

Most people assume that after they undergo surgery their health problem will be solved or at least they will be on the road to recovery. It rarely occurs to them that they might wake up after an operation with unbearable pain that is later discovered was caused by a surgical instrument that was left inside their body.

Miami, Florida, residents should be aware that these horrific surgical errors occur often enough to cause concern. In fact, nationwide, one out of every 19,000 operations ends with a foreign object left inside the patient after surgery.

Sometimes we take our day-to-day tasks for granted and don't even think twice when we are doing them. But for a nurse at a Florida hospital, her routine task cost an infant her pinky finger when she accidentally cut it off while removing an intravenous tube that was attached to the baby's hand.

This unfortunate accident happened when the mother was getting ready to checkout of the hospital and take her baby home after having been in the hospital for two days with a high temperature. The nurse that was removing the intravenous tube was using a scissors to cut it, but accidentally cut the baby's pinky finger off instead and it fell to the floor. The baby began screaming and the nurse ran and got help. Doctors at Heart of Florida Regional Medical Center tried to save the baby's finger, but it was too late because the nerves of the finger were too delicate and the veins were too small. The mother of the baby is now suing the hospital for negligence.