Male Patient

Actions for Discussion 2.4: Male Patient Locked after Monday,
April 10, 2017 12:00 AM MDT. Must post first. Scenario (based on a
real Georgia case): A male patient underwent a surgical procedure
at a hospital to insert a sheath into an artery of his groin. A
nurse employee of the hospital was instructed to attend to the
patient post-surgery to check the groin area for complications and
to clean the area as necessary. While in the room alone with the
patient, the patient awoke to discover the nurse rubbing his penis
with both hands. The patient and his wife sued the hospital under
the doctrine of respondeat superior for assault, battery, and loss
of consortium. How should the court rule? Should the hospital be
held vicariously liable for the acts of the nurse under the
doctrine of respondeat superior? Why or why not? IMPORTANT NOTE: A
lot of students are tempted to be distracted by non-issues in this
scenario, so please consider the following additional information
from the real-life case that you should consider carefully: This is
a MALE nurse. This was NOT a routine cleaning of the area—the nurse
was sexually molesting the patient. The nurse will be criminally
liable for this activity, but we don’t really care about that in
this discussion. So, PLEASE DON’T DEFEND THE NURSE, or talk about
what consequences the nurse might face. That’s not the point of
this question. Your only job is to decide whether the hospital, the
nurse’s employer, can be held liable for the nurse’s actions. To
answer that question, you have to decide whether the nurse was
acting within the course and scope of his employment such that it
would be fair to hold the hospital liable. Was this activity close
enough to the nurse’s expected duties that the hospital could have
foreseen something like this might happen? Or, was it so far
outside the scope of what a nurse is supposed to do that it would
be unfair to hold the hospital responsible? To answer that
question, you have to decide whether the nurse was acting within
the course and scope of his employment such that it would be fair
to hold the hospital liable. Was this activity close enough to the
nurse’s expected duties that the hospital could have foreseen
something like this might happen? Or, was it so far outside the
scope of what a nurse is supposed to do that it would be unfair to
hold the hospital responsible?