Patients trust healthcare professionals, such as doctors and nurses, with their very lives. That is why a health care professional must perform their job diligently and competently with a due regard to patient safety. Unfortunately, medical malpractice is all too common a problem, and it often adversely affects someone’s life and can even result in wrongful death. It is this lack of diligence that appears to be the catalyst behind the recent death of a Fayetteville man.
Recently, a 30-year-old man had checked into the Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in North Carolina for pneumonia. Medical problems for the man were nothing new as he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He had stayed in the hospital for a month earlier this fall. Nonetheless, when hospital staff sought to send the man home after an 8-day stay, they told him that they could not find anything else wrong with him despite the man’s claims to the contrary.
Against his protestations, the hospital arranged for a van to take the man home. When the driver arrived, he discovered the man was unresponsive. Reportedly, the hospital told the driver that he did this kind of stuff all the time. Yet after the driver delivered the man home, he was cold to the touch and reportedly dead.
As his family now mourns for their heartrending tragedy, they may well consider the possibility of filing a medical malpractice suit against the hospital for the man’s wrongful death. It would certainly appear that the hospital breached its duty to provide reasonable care, and that breach could give rise to monetary damages. When patients in Pitt County and elsewhere are injured or killed as a result of the negligent or willful conduct of a health care professional, they deserve compensation for their injuries.
Source: The WRAL News, “Patient dies shortly after forced discharge from Fayetteville hospital,” Nov. 23, 2011