A hospital has been ordered to pay $2.2 million to a
quadriplegic man who got horrific bedsores (pressure sores, pressure ulcers, decubitus ulcers) while staying at the hospital after a car crash in 2005.
The 30-year-old former construction worker was awarded that last month for pain and suffering following a civil
trial.
He was riding to a job with another contractor when their car skidded on
ice and crashed on Nov. 23, 2005.
He
was taken to the hospital with a spinal cord injury; he
could move his head, neck and shoulders, but little else. Because of
the injury, he couldn’t feel the
bedsores developing.
The hospital’s failure to turn the man every two hours during his
six-week stay – and the failure of his doctor to ensure that
care – caused the man to develop “stage four” bedsores on his buttocks
and lower back.
“They were all the way down to the bone,” his lawyer said. “They were huge.”
The man suffered for
years from the bedsores, which had to be surgically closed.
The sores delayed his physical rehabilitation so much he lost the chance to build upper-body strength, his lawyer said. For more, read the story.
________________________________________________________________
Robert W. Carter,
Jr. is a Virginia attorney whose law practice is dedicated to
protecting the rights of the victims of nursing home and assisted
living neglect and abuse in Richmond, Roanoke, Norfolk, Lynchburg,
Danville, Charlottesville, and across Virginia.
