Family Sues Nursing Home in Wrongful Death :
December 22, 2005
According to a lawsuit filed by grieving family members, the death of a 72-year old man was caused by improper insertion of a feeding tube into the man's abdominal cavity instead of his stomach. Charles Wurzel was admitted to Green Valley Pavilion nursing home in Delaware in December 2003 for short-term care after a stroke.
According to the lawsuit, the man had entered the nursing home facility with a feeding tube correctly implanted in his stomach by a surgeon at a local hospital. After a day at the nursing home, a registered nurse told her supervisor that the feeding tube had become dislodged. According to Green Valley protocol, this dislodged feeding tube called for emergency medical attention at a hospital or acute care facility. Instead of adhering to policy, the nurse replaced the feeding tube herself, missing the patient's stomach.
Wurzel was poisoned by food that was pumped into his abdomen for two days. On Christmas day in 2003, Mr. Wurzel died of sepsis and peritonitis caused by the feeding tube complications.
After a two-year investigation conducted by state, the registered nurse, Ms. Whitmore, responsible for improperly implanting the feeding tube was arrested and charged with nursing home abuse.
Wurzel's four surviving children, two sons and two daughters, have filed the nursing home abuse lawsuit to seek compensation for their family's losses and suffering. The family is seeking compensation for financial benefits they would have received if their father had not died, funeral expenses, legal fees, and compensation for mental anguish, and punitive sums.
In addition to Green Valley nursing home and Whitmore, the defendants in the nursing home abuse lawsuit include Green Acres Health Systems, who runs the nursing home, another nurse who discovered the dislodged feeding tube, the doctor who authorized Whitmore to implant the second feeding tube, and two nursing home supervisors who failed to detect the feeding tube complications and took no action to discipline Whitmore.
According to the lawsuit, Whitmore knew that nursing home policy prevented her or any other nurse from replacing the dislodged feeding tube. This case took two years to come to fruition because the family spent a good deal of time gathering expert witnesses to testify that Wurzel's death was, in fact, the result of a breech in recognized medical standards.
According to the family's attorney, Michael Malkiewicz, it is important to secure the proper evidence to show that nursing home abuse was the cause of this patient's death. “We take these cases very seriously. We're not going to make allegations against people until we have evidence to support them,” he explains.
“A lot of people have the misconception that lawyers make these medical conditions that result in lawsuits. But, in Delaware, we can't even file a medical malpractice suit unless we have these affidavits from members of the medical community.”
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