Opinion ID: 1058744
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: testimony of nurse francis a. vickers

Text: At trial, the Defendants proffered Nurse Francis A. Vickers as an expert to testify about assessing patient fall-risk and risk-reducing interventions. The Estate argued that because Vickers had not had experience in activating bed alarms, she did not fulfill the active clinical practice requirement for a testifying expert. Code § 8.01-581.20. The trial court agreed with the Estate and allowed Vickers to testify about fall-risk assessment and fall-risk intervention measures other than bed alarms. The Defendants, after objecting to the court's ruling, indicated that they wished to avoid telling the jury that Nurse Vickers was not qualified to testify on bed alarms, and ultimately offered Nurse Vickers as an expert only in patient fall-risk assessment. Nurse Vickers testified that Johnson was not a high fall-risk patient. On appeal, the Defendants present the following assignment of error: The trial court erred in prohibiting defendants' standard of care expert, Nurse Francis Vickers, from testifying that Ms. Johnson did not require fall-prevention measures because she was not a high-fall-risk patient. It is not clear from this assignment of error exactly which ruling of the trial court the Defendants challenge. This assignment of error does not address the limitation the trial court placed on Nurse Vickers' qualification as an expert. Nor does this assignment of error challenge Vickers' ability to testify on fall-risk assessment, because she did present such testimony. And although she did not present testimony on fall prevention measures other than bed alarms, she was entitled to do so. Furthermore, the Defendants' counsel agreed that Vickers could not be asked whether any intervention was necessary because a negative answer, based on Vickers' opinion that Johnson was not a high fall-risk patient, would imply that Vickers had also excluded bed alarms, a subject about which she was not qualified to testify. On brief here, the Defendants assert that Vickers should have been allowed to testify as to the need for initiation of fall prevention measures, regardless of the nature of the types of fall prevention interventions. We do not find any ruling of the trial court, however, specifically prohibiting such testimony. Rather, the trial court ruled that the Defendants could not question Vickers about the need for any intervention, without indicating that the question was not meant to include bed alarms. Furthermore, implicit in Nurse Vickers' opinion that Johnson was not a high fall-risk patient is the conclusion that, therefore, fall-risk prevention measures were not necessary. For these reasons, we reject this assignment of error.