Court Opinion

ID: 9885578
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 13:07:42.811397+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:55.145058
License: Public Domain

Lewis, J.
The plaintiff, by this action, seeks recovery for personal injuries allegedly suffered by him while a patient in the defendant hospital, which injuries he claims resulted from the negligent administration of a single hypodermic medication by an undergraduate nurse.
The case is here on appeal by permission of the Appellate Division where a judgment of Trial Term was unanimously affirmed which dismissed the complaint at the close of plaintiff’s evidence.
From the record before us it appears that following plaintiff’s admission to the defendant hospital on July 31,1949 — at which time he complained of pains in his side and back — the diagnosis of his physical disorder, based upon various tests and analyses, was a dormant thromboangiitis obliterans (Buerger’s disease). Then followed a series of treatments in the course of which hypodermic injections of penicillin were administered by nurses “ dressed all in white.” As a result of those treat*540ments there came a time when plaintiff’s pain had subsided to such an extent that his physician informed him he would be discharged from the hospital on the following day — August 17, 1949. On the morning of that day plaintiff was seated on a porch adjoining the ward where he had been assigned, when he was approached by a person whom he described as a nurse who wore “ black shoes and black stockings and I think it was a light — light blue kind of a striped uniform.” Her uniform differed from that worn by those who had attended him and, although he thought he had seen her before, she had not previously given bim medicinal treatments of any kind. After a brief conversation with her the plaintiff accompanied the nurse back to the ward where she administered a hypodermic injection in the lower part of the right buttock. Later, when plaintiff felt severe pain in the area of his hip, the nurse in charge of his ward administered a medication which brought relief. Thereafter, according to plaintiff’s testimony, he suffered intense pain and grievous permanent physical injuries caused by the single hypodermic injection administered to him on August 17, 1949, his claim being that the injection — which allegedly injured the right sciatic nerve — was wrongly placed, negligently done, and was administered by an incompetent undergraduate nurse whose inexperience in that type of medication was known to staff members of the defendant hospital.
Giving the plaintiff the benefit of every favorable inference reasonably to be drawn from the evidence (Faber v. City of New York, 213 N. Y. 411, 414; Hanlon v. Macfadden Publications, 302 N. Y. 502, 506) we find in the record a complete lack of certain items of proof essential to his recovery herein. In reaching that conclusion we have examined plaintiff’s pleadings and the record of evidence to ascertain whether proof was made of facts which underlie his claim, and upon the establishment of which he has the burden.
By his amended complaint the plaintiff alleges that the personal injuries for which he seeks recovery resulted from a hypodermic injection of medication — which a bill of particulars asserts was penicillin — administered to him on or about September 7, 1949. However, upon the trial the plaintiff was permitted to amend his complaint and bill of particulars to allege that the hypodermic injection in suit was given on August 17,1949. The amended complaint also alleges that the injection *541was administered to the plaintiff by “ M. D. Smith ”, a first-year student in defendant’s nursing school. We find in the record no proof whatever in support of that allegation. Although the hospital records show that, at the time plaintiff was a patient, M. D. Smith was an undergraduate nurse in the defendant’s school of nursing, the only record which mentions a person by that name in any relation to the plaintiff is a pharmacy receipt signed by “ M. D. Smith ” on September 3, 1949, for “ Codeine Phosphate Solution * * * Patient’s Name * * * Bryant ”.
Thus, although there is no suggestion that any hospital record was withheld from plaintiff for use upon the trial, there is no evidence of the fact pleaded by the plaintiff that on August 17, 1949, M. D. Smith, an undergraduate nurse, administered to him the hypodermic injection of which he complains. Nor did he, by his own testimony or by other proof, identify the person who administered that medication, except to describe her as having worn black shoes and black stockings and a light blue striped uniform which differed from that worn by other nurses who had attended him. That meager description by the plaintiff of the nurse who was in attendance upon him did not, without more, prove that the nurse who administered the hypodermic injection on August 17, 1949, was an undergraduate nurse with only a brief period of training; nor did it prove that she lacked experience in the administration of medications hypodermically, or that her proficiency in that form of medical treatment had not been the subject of careful investigation and selection by the defendant’s staff officers. Nor was there proof as to how much training is necessary to administer medications hypodermically. Upon that phase of the case there was evidence, intro- . duced as part of plaintiff’s case, that undergraduate nurses in attendance at the three-year training course conducted at the defendant hospital were permitted to give hypodermic injections during their first year of training. There was no testimony, however, that such a procedure was not in accord with practice approved by informed medical authorities, or was not in accord with similar practice prevailing in other teaching hospitals.
It is manifest that medication given to a patient by hypodermic injection is a medical act, not administrative routine. In this jurisdiction the liability of a hospital for negligence in the performance of such an act is predicated upon a lack of *542care by the hospital in selecting and furnishing the doctor or nurse by whom the act is performed. The care in such selection cannot be less than “ * * * appropriate investigation of the character and capacity of the agencies of service from the highest to the lowest.” (Hamburger v. Cornell Univ., 240 N. Y. 328, 338, 339.) To paraphrase — for purposes of this case — language written for this court in the case last cited above (p. 339), “ The plaintiff does not advance [his] case materially by fastening upon the defendant a duty of diligent selection. The burden is still [his] to prove that the duty was disregarded.” The decisive factors in the record at hand are its lack of proof by the plaintiff not only of the identity of the nurse who on August 17, 1949, administered the hypodermic injection of which plaintiff complains but also the consequent lack of proof that care by the defendant hospital was disregarded in the selection of whoever was the administering nurse. (See Schloendorff v. Society of New York Hosp., 211 N. Y. 125, 129, 132; Phillips v. Buffalo Gen. Hosp., 239 N. Y. 188, 189, 191; Sutherland v. New York Polyclinic Medical School & Hosp., 273 App. Div. 29, 30-32, affd. 298 N. Y. 682; Bakal v. University Heights Sanitarium, 277 App. Div. 572, 575-576, affd. 302 N. Y. 870.)
The decision in Howe v. Medical Arts Center Hosp. (261 App. Div. 1088, affd. 287 N. Y. 698) does not reinforce the position of the plaintiff in the case at bar. Bather does it, in our view, serve to point up a vital lack in the record now before us. In the Howe case (supra) substantial evidence came into the record as part of plaintiff’s proof — and became the chief issue at the trial and the point chiefly argued on appeal — that when the woman whose alleged negligence caused plaintiff’s injuries joined the nursing staff of the defendant hospital, appropriate investigation was not made and care was not exercised by responsible staff officers of the hospital to ascertain her qualifications for professional nursing. Evidence of that character — which became a decisive factor in the Howe case — is, as we have seen, completely lacking in the record we now review.
The judgment should be affirmed, without costs.