Federal Judiciary

TRANSFUSION CONFUSION
By Mark Thompson
markthomp@yahoo.com
Posted 09-17-08

Kings County Justice Joseph S. Levine was too quick to blame a hospital for the fact that a patient who was a Jehovah’s Witness received a blood transfusion against her wishes, the Appellate Division said. The judges on the appellate panel could not agree, however, on exactly how Levine missed the mark.

Levine had granted summary judgment to Joan Salandy on her medical malpractice claim against the Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center, its first-year orthopedic resident, Dr. Gene Choi, and Dr. Eli Bryk, a private physician who surgically replaced Salandy’s knee at the hospital. It was undisputed, after all, that she had signed a transfusion refusal form expressing her religious opposition to transfusions. Dr. Choi had signed it as a witness and placed it in the patient’s preoperative file, apparently without specifically mentioning it to Bryk, who used a standard transfusion procedure during the successful surgery despite her express refusal to consent to that. 

Full post as published by Judicial Reports on September 17, 2008 (boomark / email).