Testimony begins in trial of nurse accused of child endangerment
Testimony began on Wednesday in the trial of a North Union Township woman accused of endangering the welfare of a ventilator-dependent baby, who died in her care in 2010.
Jackie Yeagley, 44, was a home health nurse working an overnight shift in the home of 7-month-old Derek V. Miskanin Jr. on the night of Dec. 3, 2010, when the baby went into respiratory failure.
Fayette County Assistant District Attorney Gene Grimm told jurors in his opening statement Yeagley owed Miskanin a duty of care, protection and support, which was elevated by the fact that he was on life support.
Yeagley’s attorney, Christopher Capozzi, told the jury they would need to decide whether she took reasonable steps to care for the child and stated the evidence would show she was doing her job that night.
When the baby’s health rapidly deteriorated shortly after midnight, Capozzi said, Yeagley took appropriate steps to rescue him, but by the time paramedics got him to Uniontown Hospital, he was dead.
“She melted because she couldn’t save him,” Capozzi said.
According to testimony from the baby’s father, also named Derek Miskanin, the baby was born premature, at about 25 weeks gestation.
When he was discharged from the hospital, he was ventilator-dependent and required around-the-clock care. Derek Miskanin and his fiancee, Montana Fisher, the baby’s mother, were given detailed instructions on how to care for the infant when he was discharged from the hospital at 6 months of age, he testified.
Nurse Deborah Burroughs was called to testify as an expert in the care and management of pediatric patients who receive mechanical ventilation at home.
She testified she review notes and records from the night in question, and there many alarms that went off on the baby’s ventilator indicating low intubatory pressure, meaning there may have been an air leak in the system, or the tracheostomy tube that delivered air to Miskanin was loose or possibly detached.
Burroughs testified that she found that the low pressure alarm was silenced 14 times.
She said the appropriate response to the alarms would have been to check on the baby, not silence the alarms. “The ventilator is the tool — the caregiver is the life support,” Burroughs told the jury.
“It surprised me that by the sixth shift of care that the protocols (for caring for a ventilator-dependent infant) were not established in such a firm way that she went on autopilot,” Burroughs testified. She said Yeagley should have been acting automatically to follow life-saving protocol, not thinking about what to do.
Testimony resumes before Judge Nancy Vernon at 9 a.m.