Climbing up and down the stairs is a routine activity you may perform daily. But you may have to think twice about this task if you are actively suffering from or recently recovering from an illness or injury. This may start when encountering a staircase during or at the conclusion of your hospital visit. With this in mind, please follow along to find out what to do if you fall down the stairs at a hospital and how a proficient New York City slip and fall injury attorney at Mark L. Bodner, P.C. can support you after this unfortunate incident.
What should be a hospital’s protocol for patients and stairs?
For starters, as a hospital patient, it is almost always protocol to use the elevator systems. The only instance in which you should take the stairs is if there is an emergency that requires rapid evacuation from the premises (i.e., a fire). Or, in a rare situation, if your health is in critical condition, the elevator system is delayed or out of order, and you require immediate stabilization from a healthcare department on a different floor.
With this, the hospital staff member attending to you should follow established protocols when taking you up and down the stairs. For example, they should encourage you to use handrails on both sides of the stairs for support and balance, along with ensuring you take the necessary assistive devices with you (i.e., crutches, a walking boot, etc). From here, they should call an additional colleague to be present and support your movement, with one at your head and the other at your feet. All throughout, they should instruct you on the safest way to navigate the stairs.
What should I do if I fall down the stairs at a hospital?
If hospital staff do not comply with the standard protocols mentioned above, and you fall down the stairs, you may have a legitimate accident claim on your hands. This legal action should be taken, of course, after you seek an immediate medical assessment from medical professionals present at the hospital at the time of your slip and fall, along with reporting the incident to the hospital’s administration.
On another note, there is also the possibility that you slipped and fell down the stairs as a visitor to a hospital facility. The root cause of your fall may have been that the staircase was broken or faulty. Specifically, there may have been a loose handrail, wet tiles, stairs at a disproportionate distance from one another, or otherwise. At any rate, you may still hold the hospital accountable for your accident. This is because the administration should have known or reasonably known about these faults, blocked off this path until they were fixed, and fixed them promptly.
Going about your slip and fall accident claim should not be done without the wise legal counsel of a talented New York City slip and fall injury attorney. So please call to schedule your initial consultation with us at Mark L. Bodner, P.C. today.