Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Tagged with personal injury

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Alarm fatigue happens when medical workers overwhelmed by constant and loud alarm rings turn down the volume on the devices, shut them off or simply ignore them. These actions can lead to serious personal injury or wrongful death.

As hospitals invest in more and more sophisticated equipment to save lives, nurses and other hospital workers especially in Intensive Care Units have to deal with the constant and sometimes very loud ringing of alarms during their shift. A recent study estimated that the average number of alarms that sounded per bed per day in one ICU was 771. This is obviously more than staff and patients can take and hospitals have to make a priority of reviewing their alarm system or they may risk loss of their accreditation.

In a very interesting article, Lena H. Sun from the Washington Post, gives an overview of recent Medical Malpractice cases related to Alarm Fatigue and what measures are being taken by hospitals to address this growing medical concern.

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Failure%20to%20diagnose%20sepsis.jpgDelay to treat or Failure to diagnose Sepsis may lead to the loss of multiple organs and ultimately to death. Every year 500,000 Americans will be hospitalized because they suffer from severe Sepsis and 250,000 will die from it. Sepsis is a condition that is usually triggered by a bacterial infection of the bloodstream. Early diagnosis is key to preventing mortality. Thanks to a new automated diagnostic test developed by a team of researchers led by Nathan Ledeboer from the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), USA, sepsis could be diagnosed much faster and many lives could be saved.

The study is published this week in PLOS Medicine.

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In order to prevent teen car crashes and personal injury, an innovative online program focuses on improving frontal lobe execution functions such as self-regulation or impulse control so that young drivers can achieve insight about driving risks and improve their driving skills.

The frontal lobe of the brain is not fully developed until the age of 25 and young drivers need specific help. With this concept in mind, Dr Robert Isler, PhD, an associate professor of Psychology at The University of Waikato in New Zealand, created eDrive, an online interactive driver training program that takes drivers on a trip through New Zealand while teaching them specific driving skills.

Read more about it in this interesting blog from Flaura Koplin Winston, MD, PhD from the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

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Drug-induced liver injury (also called DILI or drug-induced hepatotoxicity) is a significant cause of personal injury and wrongful death in many patient populations. According to a study published in in the June issue of Gastroenterology induced liver injury is caused in 75% of cases by a single prescription, in 16% of cases by a dietary supplement and in 9% of cases by multiple agents.

The population based study performed in Iceland, demonstrated that the incidence of DILI was the highest reported to date. Lead author Einar Björnsson, Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, National University Hospital, Reykjavik, Iceland Faculty of Medicine, University of Iceland, presents the study in the video below.

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Installation of antimicrobial copper surface is a very effective way to fight infections and prevent personal injury due to hospital negligence. A unique study presented by the York Health Economics Consortium (YHEC) at the International Conference on Prevention and Infection Control (ICPIC) in Geneva, investigated the economic benefits of deploying antimicrobial copper touch surfaces in intensive care units (ICUs) to fight the rampant international epidemic of healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) . The model is transparent and the results show rapid return on the investment.

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The new CPSC Pool or Spa Submersions: Estimated Injuries and Reported Fatalities, 2013 Report indicate that 75% of victims of drowning in a pool or spa are younger than 5 years old. Government data also show that the majority of African American and Hispanic children between 5 and 14 years old don’t know how to swim and therefore have a much higher risk of drowning in a pool.

Every year more than 5000 children visit the emergency room after a pool or spa related injury and an estimated average of 390 children drown. Most of the accidents happen in backyard pools.

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In its new pool safety campaign, The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is asking parents and families to teach their children how to swim, to install a fence around backyard pools and spas and to watch children when they play around the pool.

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young%20workers%20accident%20prevention.jpgEvery 9 minutes a young worker suffers injury at work. In 2010, 328 teens died and 110’000 were injured at their workplace. Most accidents are due to unsafe equipment, insufficient training and supervision, dangerous work not appropriate for teens, pressure to perform better and stressful environment. Accidents happen mostly in retail, restaurant & fast food, cleaning & maintenance, outdoor work, construction, industry, agriculture and in offices. There is an increase of accidents in the summer as young people are finishing school and starting a new job or simply trying to make a little extra money during their vacations.

Young workers are twice as likely to get hurt on the job than older workers and often they are not aware of their rights. For this reason OSHA just launched a campaign that includes a special young workers web section as well as specific brochures for young workers on landscaping, retail work and grain engulfment. Brochures on landscaping and retail also exist in Spanish

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While working on the Firefighter Injury Research and Safety Trend FEMA project, Workplace safety researchers from Drexel University School of Public Health found out that the addition of industry and occupation data information in the data collected by hospitals would benefit not only firefighters but also every woker in America. Here is a link to the white paper.

Every year an estimated 4.1 million workers suffer a serious work injury or illness however the number of workplace injuries as well as information about the type of injury and how, when and why specific injuries occur are not tracked by hospitals. In the “The Need for Industry and Occupation in Hospital Data” that was just published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Dr. Jennifer Taylor, Assistant Professor, and Leslie Frey, Policy Coordinator in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Drexel University School of Public Health petitioned for the inclusion of standards for industry and occupation within hospital data.

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Car accidents as well as truck and bus accidents, are a common cause of cervical disc herniation especially those during which an abrupt change of speed ocurrs. Seat belts and airbags in cars are designed to prevent this type of personal injury. During a vehicle collision, the weight of the head being moved quickly or violently forward and/or backward produces tremendous pressure on the cervical vertebrae (neck) and can cause the disc to bulge or herniate.

Basically each intervertebral disc has two parts, the annulus fibrosus and the nucleus pulposus. The annulus fibrosus is made up of layers of fibrous tissue. It surrounds the nucleus pulposus and serves as a retaining sheath of dense fibrous tissue which keep the nucleus under pressure. The nucleus pulposus which is retained within the annulus fibrosus has a mucoid character and consistency similar to grissle and acts like a fluid. Herniation occurs when the nucleus pulposus protrudes or ruptures through the surrounding annulus fibrosus.

In this video, Dr Nabil Ebraheim, Professor and Chair of Orthopedic Surgery at The University of Toledo, explains what a disc herniation is and how it affects other parts of the upper body.

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Use of cell phones or other electronic devices while driving is dangerous and can cause fatal car accidents. Most drivers know this but they still use their cell phones or other mobile devices to text, look at travel directions, check their emails, consult their calendar appointments, surf the web or play video games.

According to the latest National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS) “Driver Electronic Device Use in 2011“, texting or manipulating an hand held device while driving significantly increased from 2010 to 2011.

The trend is particularly alarming among young drivers and women.