Injured Due To Fall From A Hospital Bed?
Our Ohio medical malpractice lawyers often pursue cases on behalf of patients who suffer serious injuries from falls out bed in hospitals. These injuries are preventable with proper safety precautions and patient care plans.
Falls out of hospital beds often lead to serious injuries, like fractured hips, and even death.
Risk Factors For Falls Out of Beds
The strongest risk factor domains predicting the likelihood of future falls include: a previous fall, age, abnormalities of gait and balance, visual and cognitive impairment. The hospital staff must do a proper assessment to determine if he or she is a fall risk.
There are many factors that contribute to a fall from a hospital bed, which include:
- The patient is disoriented and attempts to get out of bed without assistance
- The patient has dementia or some other condition which affects their ability to understand the danger of falling from bed
- The patient is on medications that affect the coordination and stability of the patient to get out of bed without assistance
- The patient needs to use the bathroom and presses the call light for assistance, but no one shows up to the room to help
Safety Precautions To Prevent Falls from Hospital Beds
If the patient is a fall risk, especially from bed, the hospital must take necessary precautions to prevent the fall. These fall prevention measures and injury prevention measures include:
- Use of bed rails or restraints in certain circumstances
- Use of bed alarms to alert staff if the patient attempts to get out of bed
- Use of floor pads next to the bed to minimize injury if the patient does fall out of bed
- Frequent “coaching” by the hospital staff for the patient to call for assistance when needing to get out of bed
Legal Rights of Patients After Fall From Bed
When a hospital patient falls out of bed due to the failure of the hospital staff to properly assess the risk of a fall injury or fails to take measures to prevent a fall injury, the patient and the family can pursue a hospital negligence case on behalf of the patient. This will not only help compensate the patient for the injuries or the family if the patient dies from the fall, but will help prevent other similar incidents from occurring at the facility at a later date.
Contact an Ohio Medical Malpractice Lawyer
Our experienced malpractice attorneys handle cases for patient falls from hospital beds in Ohio. Individuals injured by a medical malpractice should contact an Ohio medical malpractice lawyer immediately to discuss your case. Call our office now at (800) 637-8170 to discuss your case.
