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Neal v. Yang9/30/2004
ility that plaintiff would deliver a depressed infant and despite unsuccessful attempts at a forceps delivery, Dr. Yang did not alert the on-call pediatrician, Dr. Manoochehr Sharifi, in time for him to be present to treat the newborn immediately after birth. When Dr. Sharifi was first paged, he was not on the premises and had to travel to the hospital. Samantha was born without a heart rate or respiration.
Because Dr. Sharifi was not immediately available when Samantha was born, Dr. Yang requested that defendant assist in Samantha's neonatal resuscitation (NNR). St. Therese obstetrical nurses, including Connie Fossler, testified that defendant, as the anesthesiologist on call and in the hospital, was paged as part of the NNR team to respond to Samantha's resuscitation. Defendant had no prior information concerning Samantha's delivery. She was not told why she was paged. Defendant had no doctor-patient relationship and no prior contact with plaintiff before she assisted with the NNR.
When defendant entered plaintiff's delivery room, she saw that a full NNR was already in progress with nurses and other medical care professionals providing bag and mask ventilation as well as chest compressions for Samantha. Defendant participated in the remainder of the resuscitation. Defendant was the only physician involved in the NNR and, as such, was in charge. Twenty-two minutes after Samantha's birth, cardiac activity was achieved. After Samantha was stabilized, she was airlifted to Lutheran General Hospital and admitted to its neonatal intensive care unit. As a result of oxygen deprivation, Samantha suffered, inter alia, cerebral anoxia, permanent spastic quadriparesis, hypoxic damage, and seizure disorder. Because she required 24-hour care due to all the injuries she suffered, upon her discharge Samantha resided in various children's nursing homes until her death in November 2000.
Plaintiff filed a complaint alleging that Dr. Yang, St. Therese, and Nurse Fossler were negligent in the delivery of the baby and, inter alia, for failing to timely assemble a skilled NNR team. Plaintiff amended her complaint and added Dr. Sharifi and defendant. Plaintiff alleged in her complaint against defendant that the delay in regaining cardiac and respiratory activity and oxygen to Samantha's brain was due to defendant's negligent performance of the NNR and that the attending pediatrician, Dr. Sharifi, failed to assess and timely treat Samantha.
Plaintiff's expert, Dr. Charles Falcone, opined that it was within the customary training of anesthesiologists who were educated in the early to mid 1990s to be trained in NNR as part of their residency programs. He further opined that, in the context of the St. Therese hospital setting that he had been made aware of, and considering the persons available who possessed the level of training to provide NNR at St. Therese, defendant would have been an appropriate person to provide resuscitation to Samantha. Dr. Falcone further testified that resuscitation would have been part of the anesthesiology services required to be provided to all patients of St. Therese.
Dr. Kenneth Tuman, director of the American Board of Anesthesiology, testified that a determination of what specific services are "customarily" performed by anesthesiologists is made locally at the hospital in question. According to Dr. David Shoults, the chairman of anesthesia at St. Therese from 1987 to 2000, NNR was not a responsibility of the anesthesia group. The anesthesia group was not expected to run NNR emergencies at St. Therese. The group's NNR-related service was limited to intubating newborns delivered by cesarean section, but only if the pediatrician needed the assistance and
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