Civil SuitDuty to ActEMSMunicipal LiabilityNegligenceWrongful deathYou Can't Make This Stuff Up
Kentucky EMS Provider and Medic Sued for Wrongful Death
A Kentucky paramedic who mistakenly pronounced a live patient dead is being sued by the victim’s husband for failing to render care that ultimately led to her death.
In April, 2014, Kristal Tygart , 46, was pronounced dead by Lincoln county medic Troy Cain. Cain, who never checked the victim’s pulse, requested that the coroner respond. It was the coroner ultimately determined that Tygart was still breathing some 40 minutes later. She later died.
Daniel Tygart, Kristal’s husband, is now suing Cain along with Stanford Emergency Medical Service and five other employees for wrongful death.
If the medic didn’t check the pulse, what lead him to assume she was dead? And he previously called a chopper for a cut on the head? Granted, there’s a WHOLE lot of detail missing, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want this particular medic within 500 feet of me if I were sick or injured.
If you’re going to “pronounce” someone dead, I definitely want to have a cardiac rhythm strip showing “Asystole” in two or more leads.
What’s an extra few minutes to take, patch the person up to the cardiac monitor and
run a rhythm “strip”?
They’re either in an agonal/asystolic rhythm and meet the criteria to be pronounced or in a Pulseless Electrical Activity “PEA” rhythm and you follow ACLS and local protocal guidelines-ie., “Work them up”.
One life ended and one career ruined all because of laziness.
No one runs strip on dead ppl anymore. 1995 called. They want their protocols back….
They’re not dead till they’re warm and dead. If I were a medic (rather than a basic), I’d want some sort of documentary proof that the person was, in fact, dead. Too many similar stories out there to take a chance. Our protocols are fairly commonsense: no shockable rhythm >20 minutes, or absence of all vital signs > 20 minutes, or irreversible signs of death (dependent lividity, rigor, charring, decapitation, bisection, etc.)