Birth Injuries - Informed Consent in Delaware
As a Delaware medical malpractice lawyer, the saddest cases I handle are severe birth injuries that could have been avoided. Usually, this involves a delay in the delivery during which time damage to the baby’s brain occurs because of a lack of oxygen. Unfortunately, this happens much too often. Take a look at the following example.
A Maryland jury recently awarded $13 million to a mother who was not told by her doctor that a C-section was an option. The mother had gone to the hospital at 28 weeks gestation with bleeding. After she was stabilized, they kept her in the hospital for the next 6 weeks for monitoring and observation. Although her OBGYN discovered several complications with the mother’s pregnancy, he didn’t tell her about this and never gave her the option of an earlier delivery by C-section. During this time, the mother had what’s known as a complete placental abruption, and this caused her son to have severe permanent and irreversible neurologic injuries.
The Court decided that the doctrine of informed consent required the mother’s doctor to divulge all information that would be material to her decision about whether to continue with the conservative treatment and wait until 36 weeks gestation, or to deliver earlier by C-section.
So what is informed consent? In Delaware, informed consent is the patient’s consent to medical treatment after the patient has been told the nature of the proposed treatment and the risks and alternatives to that treatment which a reasonable person would consider important to the decision whether or not to undergo the treatment. The important thing about informed consent is that it’s more than just signing a written consent form. Instead, informed consent involves communication between the doctor and the patient.
In my next article about informed consent, I’ll discuss what this communication process should include.
