Post One Hundred Eight: You Tell Me

Starting trial on Monday. For anyone who happens along this blog, you tell me your opinion: is our doctor negligent or not?

Four year old girl comes into ER after suffering an ankle injury while playing outside. Is also found to have a 104.6 fever. The nurses give tylenol, and the fever drops to 99 by the time our doc sees her (he was aware of the 104.6 fever at time of presentation).

He performs his physicial examination; as with the nurses, no wheezing, no crackles, no cough, no shortness of breath, and O2 saturation is at 96%. She is interactive and responsive (even joking around with the x-ray tech) to those around her. She is discharged in a splint with instructions to follow-up with an orthopedist and to monitor the fever. However, no blood test or chest x-ray was ordered.

The fever never again reaches 102, per the mom.

Less than 36 hours later, after waking up to say goodbye to her dad who was going to work, she is found in her bed dead.

Autopsy reveals staphylococcol aureus-PVL, a flesh-eating bacteria that resulted in lesions on all of her internal organs.

Plaintiff's expert says chest x-ray and blood testing would reveal the bacteria, allowing her to be put on antibiotics which would have saved her life.

Our experts say that standard of care was met given the girl's presentation, and that putting her on antibiotics would not have saved her life.

So: based on that overview, if you were sitting on the jury would you find our doc negligent?