Patient Falls Down Stairs: Orderly Was Negligent
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
May 1998
Quick Summary: A hospital orderly insisted over the patient’s protests the patient stand up from the gurney and walk down a flight of stairs. The orderly was transporting the patient from one diagnostic test to another in the hospital. The patient fell.
The Court of Appeals of Ohio ruled this was medical negligence. However, this meant the court had to dismiss the case. As a medical negligence rather than ordinary negligence case, there was only a one-year statute of limitations for filing the suit.
Grubb v. Hospital, 691 N.E. 2d 333 (Ohio App., 1997).