Every day pregnant women put themselves and their unborn baby in the care of a doctor who will get them through labor and delivery. It may often take a fair amount of time following the patient's admission to the hospital until the infant is born. During some\part of this time doctors often rely on the nurses and staff to keep an eye on the expectant mother's progress and to keep them up to date of any problems that might arise.

The physician continues to be accountable for supervising the nurses and staff. Further, the nurses and staff are responsible for having the knowledge, training and experience to identify signs of difficulties and for informing the physician when they do arise. However, nurses and staff occasionally fail to meet these standards.

Consider the reported lawsuit in which a pregnant woman having reached full term commenced going through contractions while at home. On the way the local hospital she started having nonstop major pain. When she arrived at the hospital she told the admitting nurse that she was having intense pain exclaiming that she thought something was wrong. However the nurse either failed to understand or ignored the womans complaints and did not call the obstetrician, who had not yet arrived at the hospital, to inform him.

Instead the nurse acted as though this was a typical pregnancy. Critical time went by until she even began monitoring the fetal heart rate. As soon as she finally did understand that the unborn baby was experiencing fetal distress. Finally the nurse did advise the obstetrician, who even now had not come to the hospital, by telephone. A second obstetrician on the unit took charge and performed an emergency C-section. The intense pain had been caused by a placental abruption which led the unborn baby to experience a lack of oxygen producing serious brain injury. The baby is permanently disabled and has to have 24/7 attention. The law firm that represented the family announced that they were able to reach a $4.5 Million settlement $4,500,000 from the hospital for the nursing not spotting that the pregnant woman had experienced a placental abruption.

In this matter the patient in fact signalled the nurse of her sensation that there was a problem with the pregnancy. At this point in the pregnancy intense persistent abdominal pain can be the result of a placental abruption. It is not known why the nurse failed to connect these. Regardless if she disregarded the woman's complaints, failed to hear them, did not have the right knowledge, training or experience to correctly interpret the situation, or discounted her complaints because a placental abruption is regularly (though not always) accompanied by observable vaginal bleeding, she overlooked signs of a serious problem.

The result, however, was a serious injury to the unborn child resulting in a lifelong disability. Due to the damage from the nurses error the law firm that handled this matter documented that it managed to achieve a settlement designed to be enough so that the child has appropriate care for life.