Indiana Injury Lawyer Blog

Hospital personnel, including doctors and nurses could be concealing infection-causing organisms in their uniforms. A study conducted by a group of Israeli researchers and published in the American Journal of Infection Control, found alarmingly high levels of disease-causing orgasms in doctors’ and nurses’ clothing.

The Israeli researchers tested swabs taken from 75 registered nurses and 60 doctors at a hospital in Jerusalem. What they found was shocking. At least 50% of the samples tested positive for pathogens. About 53% of the uniforms yielded dangerous infection-causing bacteria. What's worse 11% of the organisms that were found on the clothing, were the most dangerous kind - resistant to multiple antibiotics, like the MRSA bacterium.

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The rates of several hospital-acquired infections, including those caused by the deadly MRSA, decreased in 2010. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hospitals across the country have reported a drop of more than 3% in the numbers of hospital patients who acquired the deadly MRSA infection.

In 2010 there were 21.46 MRSA infections per 100,000 hospitalized patients. The Department Of Health And Human Services has set a goal of reducing MRSA infections by 50% by the year 2013.

There was also a drop of 33% in the numbers of central line-associated bloodstream infections. Surgical site infections also fell by 10%, while the number of urinary tract infections contracted through catheters in hospitals fell by about 7%.

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Last month, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that plaintiffs suing for medical malpractice are not eligible to bring a separate civil action for the loss of medical records. Claims of loss of medical records can be combined with a negligence lawsuit.

The decision comes in a medical malpractice lawsuit filed by a woman against the Howard Regional Health System in Kokomo. The woman had an emergency cesarean delivery in 1999, and her child suffered numerous neurological problems after the birth. She sued the hospital, but filed a separate lawsuit against the hospital for the loss of certain medical records relating to her son’s care, which, she claimed, prevented her from suing her obstetrician.

During discovery, files of the boy’s care between 2003 and 2005 were handed over, but the record was found to be incomplete. Missing records including those related to labor protocols and fetal monitoring strips. The woman filed another lawsuit, and alleged that the files had been removed from the records deliberately.

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Soon after the deadly stage collapse at the Indiana State Fair last month that killed seven people, the state announced a $5 million settlement for victims of the tragedy. However, questions are already being raised about the feasibility of a cap like this in a tragedy that has claimed so many lives and left so much devastation in its wake.

Seven people died when stage rigging at the Indiana State Fair collapsed just before a concert was due to begin. More than forty people at the concert were seriously injured. Some of them suffered critical injuries.

The state responded by announcing a $5 million settlement to be divided among the survivors of those who were killed in the tragedy, as well as those who were injured. The settlement was set at $5 million because that is the maximum the state can commit to under Indiana's liability cap. Several states have caps on state liability, while states like Ohio and California have no cap at all.

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Last year, Americans consumed $28.1 billion worth of nutritional supplements, in the process feeding one of the most unregulated manufacturing industries in the country. Not only is there little evidence that many of these supplements work as well as they claim, but there is also increasing evidence that many of them contain dangerous ingredients that are not mentioned on their labels.

It’s hard for Indiana personal injury lawyers to overstate the dangers to Americans from unsafe nutritional and herbal supplements. The Food and Drug Administration does not have the authority to approve supplements before they're released into the market. Unlike with pharmaceutical drugs that have to be processed through a conventional approval procedure before they're made available to consumers, nutritional supplements can be introduced into the market without FDA approval. The only time that the Food and Drug Administration can step in to pressure the company to withdraw products, is when there are reports of illnesses or injuries from the use of these products.

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A pioneering new study that aims to use data logging equipment installed on motorcycles to record motorcyclists’ behavior, thereby offering new insights about the causes of accidents, has just begun.

The MSF 100 Motorcyclists Naturalistic Study is the first of its kind into motorcycle accidents. It is based on a similar study into car accident prevention. The study is sponsored by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, with help from the Virginia Tech transportation Institute.
The study will be conducted over a period of one year, and will involve more than 100 motorcycles, each of which will be fitted with recording equipment. The equipment will include cameras, trackers and other aids that will help researchers monitor motorcyclists’ behavior as they ride every day.

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