The 5th District Court of Appeal recently held in Shands Teaching Hospital v. Dunn that a hospital’s policy and procedure requiring two hospital nurses to administer Digoxin to patients in order to ensure that a patient receives the prescribed dose is evidence of routine practice and should be admitted as evidence even if the nurses involved have no recollection of the subject patient or subject administration of the medication. Section 90.406, Florida Statutes states, “Evidence of the routine practice of an organization, whether corroborated or not and regardless of the presence of eyewitnesses, is admissible to prove that the conduct of the organization on a particular occasion was in conformity with the routine practice.” The existence of a routine practice creates an inference that an agent or employee of the organization acted in accordance with the practice. In the absence of contrary evidence, jurors may properly assume that an employee has adhered to established procedures. The evidence of a hospital’s routine practice that two nurses are used to corroborate the correct medication dosage would be evidence to rebut a claim of overdose.
Read the entire opinion by clicking here: Shands Teaching Hospital v. Dunn
For more information on defending medical malpractice, nursing home and general liability matters in Florida contact Howard Citron at Citron & Associates, P.A. – www.citronlegal.com.
