When most people think of nurses, they imagine a person who is there to care for the sick and injured. However, it is becoming a more common scenario for nurses to end up on the other end of the stethoscope and in need of medical care themselves. According to data gathered from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), nurses suffer from over 35,000 occupational back and other injuries every year. These injuries are serious enough to cause a halt to lifestyle and missed days at work.

Those particularly susceptible to back injuries are nursing assistants and orderlies. In fact, musculoskeletal injuries to nursing-field workers occur triple the amount than they do for construction workers. Moreover, these workers have more of these types of injuries than truckers, warehouse workers, and stock clerks. The BLS statistics also reveal that the main way these injuries occur is from lifting and moving patients.

The hospital industry has recently come under fire for failing to develop safe patient handling protocols in order to protect nursing staff from chronic back injuries. There has been much criticism of hospital administrators for not making this issue a top priority, even from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). A spokesperson from OSHA says the agency’s hands are tied in protecting nurses unless new laws are passed granting OSHA the powers to do so.

There are safety protocols which could easily be put in place to protect nursing staff, and some hospitals have already implemented them. One hospital, which uses a procedure referred to as “safe patient handling” has already seen an 80 percent reduction in back injuries to nurses—their staff has received extensive training on safe lifting and special machines are used to lift the patients.

If you are a member of the nursing field and have suffered from back, neck, or other musculoskeletal injuries, contact an experienced Westport personal injury attorney to find out what legal recourse you may have for your pain and loss.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has issued a list of what they say should be safety priorities for 2015. According to the NTSB, there are over 100 truck safety recommendations that have been made by the agency, but highway regulators have failed to act on those recommendations, contributing to the number of truck accidents that occur every day.

There are more than two million commercial truck drivers on the nation’s roadways. There are also more than 4,000 people killed every year in truck crashes. One of the most publicized crashes from 2014 involved comedian Tracy Morgan, who was seriously injured when a commercial truck plowed into the limousine in which Morgan, along with five other people, were traveling. One person was killed in that crash. Walmart, the owner of the truck, recently settled a wrongful death suit with the dead victim’s family. There are also criminal charges pending against the driver of that truck.

The NTSB’s statistics show that there has been a 17 percent increase in the number of fatal truck accidents, since 2009. One of the biggest causes of these accidents is driver fatigue. In the Morgan accident, police records show the driver had not slept for over 24 hours. The NTSB says that trucking companies should be putting policies into place that to not only ensure their drivers are not struggling with fatigue, but to also screen them for any sleep disorders which could also affect their driving.

The dangers of driver fatigue may play even more of a role in trucking accidents thanks to a move by Congress which did away with a regulation which prohibited truck drivers from working more than 82 hours in an eight day period.

Another issue the NTSB points out in their report is the lack of enforcing safety regulations. Too many trucks—more than 20 percent on the road—fail safety inspections. The agencies stresses there should be much more enforcement by highway regulators of these inspections.

If you have been injured in an accident caused by a commercial truck driver, contact an experienced Westport personal injury attorney to find out what legal recourse you may have against the driver and company for your pain and loss.

A recent study has found that when children are admitted to the hospital, the course of medical treatment they receive typically involves the administration of multiple medications. Too often these medications interact with each other and cause serious side-effects and injuries in the young patients. But what was even more alarming about the study’s results is the way medical personnel often ignore the alarm systems put in place which are supposed to alert them to possible drug interactions.

The study was conducted by doctors from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, utilizing data from 12 months of medical records provided by 43 children’s hospitals from around the country. The research team discovered that of the approximately half million children who were hospitalized during that year, almost half were given medication combinations which have the potential for harmful side-effects when interacted with each other.

Potential dangerous side effects from the combinations of medications include breathing problems, sedation, bleeding issues, and a reduction in iron absorption. Another serious side effect is the unknown reduction of effectiveness that one drug may have on another, as it may potentially eradicate the healing powers the medication has which a child needs to get better.

Of all the children’s medical data that was used for the study, 49 percent were given dangerous combinations of drugs. The two most common categories prescribed were opioid painkillers and antibiotics.

Hospitals do have safeguards in check to monitor for potential drug interactions in patients. These electronic alerts ring an alarm when a patient is receiving a medication which can be harmful when interacted with another medication the patient may be receiving. However, a real concern to the researchers of this study was how medical personnel do not pay attention to these alarms. The reason for this is there are so many drugs that do interact, these alarms are constantly going off, and doctors are left suffering from what the study calls “alert fatigue.”

If your child has suffered a serious illness or injury because he or she was given an incorrect or dangerous combination of medications, contact an experienced Westport medical malpractice attorney to discuss your case and legal options.