How to Handle a Birth Injury Caused by Medication Errors

August 19, 2025

A birth injury from a medication error happens when a healthcare provider—a doctor, nurse, or pharmacist—makes a mistake in prescribing, administering, or monitoring a drug during pregnancy or delivery, leading to harm to your child. This might involve the wrong medication, an incorrect dose of a correct medication like Pitocin, or a failure to recognize a harmful drug interaction.

Proving that a specific medication error directly caused a complex birth injury like cerebral palsy or a developmental disability requires an investigation into medical records, timelines, and hospital procedures. The evidence is usually buried in charts and electronic logs that you may not have access to.

Justice and financial security for your child’s future are possible. This comes from holding the responsible parties accountable and securing compensation that covers a lifetime of medical care, therapy, and other necessary support.

If you believe your child’s injury was caused by a medication error, call Wapner Newman at (215) 569-0900 for a free consultation to discuss your situation.

What is a Medication Error in a Birth Injury Context?

The Chain of Responsibility

Errors can happen at several key moments:

The Prescription Phase: A doctor prescribes a drug known to pose risks during pregnancy (e.g., certain antidepressants or anti-seizure medications) or calculates the wrong dosage.
The Administration Phase: A nurse gives the medication at the wrong time, in the wrong way (e.g., IV drip is too fast), or confuses medications. This is a significant risk, with a median error rate of 8-25% in healthcare settings.
The Monitoring Phase: The medical team fails to watch for and react to adverse effects of a drug on the mother or baby. For example, failing to monitor fetal distress after administering Pitocin to induce labor.

Common Drugs Involved in Birth Injury Claims

Certain medications, while useful, carry significant risks if misused during labor and delivery. Some of the most common ones seen in birth injury cases include:

Pitocin (Oxytocin): Used to induce or speed up labor. An overdose can cause violent contractions, leading to fetal oxygen deprivation and conditions like hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE).
SSRIs (Antidepressants): Certain antidepressants like Paxil or Prozac have been linked to birth defects if used during pregnancy.
Anesthesia/Pain Medication: An epidural error or incorrect dosage of pain medication can cause a drop in the mother’s blood pressure, reducing blood flow to the baby.
Antibiotics: Failure to administer necessary antibiotics or administering the wrong one can lead to untreated infections that cause harm.

How State and Federal Medication Safety Laws Affect Birth Injury Cases in Pennsylvania and New Jersey

Both Pennsylvania and New Jersey require healthcare providers to follow strict state and federal standards designed to prevent medication errors, especially during childbirth.

Key Laws and Protocols

Barcode Scanning and Electronic Prescribing: Hospitals are required to use barcode scanning and electronic prescribing to reduce human error. This ensures that the right medication and dosage are given to the right patient. Failing to use these systems or bypassing them without proper authorization is a violation of standard care.
Double-Check Systems: High-risk medications such as Pitocin (used to induce labor) must be independently verified by two qualified medical professionals before administration.
FDA Labeling and Risk Communication: Drugs with known risks during pregnancy must be labeled with specific warnings. If a provider prescribes or administers such a medication without discussing the risks or reviewing FDA guidelines, that can serve as direct evidence of negligence.

When these protocols are ignored or poorly implemented, it is strong evidence that the hospital or provider failed to meet the legal standard of care. Courts in both states routinely consider violations of medication safety protocols as powerful proof in medical malpractice claims

Your First Steps at Home: Gathering the Pieces of Your Story

Your energy is best spent on preservation, not arguments. The best way to help us help you is to gather the raw materials that will later form the foundation of your case.

Create a Timeline

Your memory is the first and most important piece of evidence. Write down everything you can recall about your pregnancy and delivery.

What medications were you prescribed during pregnancy?
What drugs were you given in the hospital?
Who administered them?
What do you remember hearing or feeling after a medication was given?

Collect Every Piece of Paper

Keep everything related to your and your baby’s medical care. Your collection should include:

Prescription bottles
Pharmacy receipts
Insurance explanation of benefits (EOBs)
Hospital bills
Discharge summaries

Keep a Journal of Your Child’s Health

Document your child’s symptoms, doctor’s appointments, and developmental milestones (or missed milestones). Note every specialist you see, every therapy session, and every new diagnosis. This log becomes a living record of the injury’s impact.

How We Uncover the Truth: Proving the Medication Error Caused the Injury

The central question in a medical malpractice case revolves around the legal standard of care. It’s a concept that simply means: did the doctor or hospital act with the same level of reasonable skill that another medical professional in their field would have under similar circumstances?

Connecting the Dots (Causation)

The most challenging part of these cases is proving that the medication error—the breach in the standard of care—was the direct cause of your child’s specific injury. This requires meeting the “preponderance of the evidence” standard, which means showing it was more likely than not (>~50%) that the error led to the harm.

Our Investigation Process

Here is how we approach building a case for a birth injury caused by medication errors:

Securing Medical Records: We obtain all records, including the ones you don’t have access to, like internal hospital reports, fetal monitoring strips, and pharmacy dispensing logs.
Consulting Medical Professionals: We work with medical professionals who can analyze the records to determine if the standard of care was breached. They can provide testimony on what should have happened and whether the mistake led to the injury.
Identifying Systemic Failures: Was this a single person’s mistake, or a failure of the hospital’s safety protocols? We examine training logs and internal procedures to find out. High-profile cases often lead to hospitals implementing new safety interventions after a serious error.

Identifying All Responsible Parties

A medication error is rarely the fault of a single “bad apple.” In many cases, it stems from a breakdown in a system designed to have multiple checks and balances. When we investigate, we look at the entire chain of events to determine every party that shares responsibility.

Potential Liable Parties Include:

The Prescribing Physician: For ordering the wrong drug or dosage.
The Attending Nurse or Anesthesiologist: For administering the drug improperly or failing to monitor the patient.
The Hospital: For being “vicariously liable” for its employees’ negligence or for its own failures, such as inadequate staff training, being understaffed, or not having proper medication verification systems in place as required by federal regulations.
The Pharmacy (Hospital or Retail): For dispensing the wrong medication or dosage.
The Drug Manufacturer: In some cases, the drug itself may be defective or carry inadequate warnings about its risks during pregnancy, which can be the basis for a product liability claim. The FDA has strict rules for labeling drugs with known birth injury risks, and a failure to comply can be a form of negligence.

What Compensation Is For: Planning for a Lifetime of Care

The goal of a birth injury lawsuit is to secure the financial resources necessary to give your child the best quality of life possible. This means that, if successful, your child has access to the best care, therapies, and support for the rest of their life.

Types of Damages We Pursue:

We pursue compensation for every way this injury has impacted your child and your family. This falls into two main categories:

Economic Damages (Tangible Costs):

Past and Future Medical Bills: This covers everything from the initial NICU stay to future surgeries, medications, and doctor’s visits.
Therapeutic Care: Physical, occupational, and speech therapy.
Mobility Aids and Assistive Technology: Wheelchairs, communication devices, and home modifications.
In-Home Care: The cost of hiring a professional caregiver if needed.
Loss of Future Earning Capacity: The income your child will be unable to earn over their lifetime due to their injury.

Non-Economic Damages (Intangible Costs):

Pain and Suffering: For the physical pain and emotional distress your child endures.
Loss of Life’s Pleasures: Compensation for the inability to participate in and enjoy life’s normal activities.
Emotional Distress for the Family: The mental anguish parents suffer from witnessing their child’s injury and managing their care.

How to Obtain Hospital Medication Records in PA and NJ

If you suspect a medication error led to your child’s injury, your first step should be obtaining the relevant medical and pharmacy records. Here’s how our legal team will help you do this in Pennsylvania and New Jersey:

Requesting the Right Documents

We’ll draft a formal, written request for:

Medication Administration Records (MARs)
Pharmacy dispensing logs
Incident reports related to medication errors
Nursing notes and IV flow sheets

Pennsylvania law gives you the right to access your medical records, and hospitals must respond within 30 days. New Jersey law offers similar protections and deadlines.

Why These Records Matter

MARs and pharmacy logs will show exactly what drugs were prescribed and administered, who signed off, and at what times.
Incident reports and nursing notes can reveal missed steps, monitoring failures, or staff confusion.
Gaps, missing signatures, or override notes in electronic records may point to a breakdown in hospital safety systems.

What We Focus On

We’ll ask specifically for all “audit trails” and “override reports” from the hospital’s electronic health record system. These are internal documents that track when protocols are bypassed.

Common Defense Strategies—And How We Defeat Them

Hospitals and insurance companies in Pennsylvania and New Jersey use several tactics to deny responsibility in medication-related birth injury cases.

Defense 1: “The Injury Was Genetic or Unavoidable”

Hospitals may claim the outcome was due to a pre-existing condition or something inherently high-risk about the pregnancy. To counter this, experienced birth injury attorneys use independent medical experts to review the full case history. Experts can show whether injury patterns or timing match drug errors, not genetic issues.

Defense 2: “Consent Forms Waive Liability”

You may be told that signing a consent form means you accepted all risks. This is false. Consent forms do not protect providers from liability for errors such as giving the wrong drug or the wrong dose. Only risks explicitly discussed and documented are covered; anything beyond that, including preventable errors, is still malpractice.

Defense 3: “The Medication Was Not the Real Cause”

Hospitals may argue that the medication error did not cause the harm, pointing instead to premature birth, maternal health, or unrelated events. The timeline is important to pin down: if a child develops distress minutes after a drug is administered, and this pattern matches documented risks (such as Pitocin-induced contractions causing oxygen deprivation), it is strong evidence of causation. This is supported by AHRQ guidance on medication safety.

Frequently Asked Questions About Birth Injury Medication Errors

What if I’m not 100% sure a medication error caused the injury?

You don’t need to be. It is not your job to have definitive proof. It is our job to investigate and determine if there is a valid claim. If you have a reasonable suspicion that a medication played a role, that is enough to warrant a free, confidential conversation with our team.

Will we have to go to court?

Many birth injury cases are settled out of court through negotiations. Hospitals and their insurance companies often prefer to settle to avoid the uncertainty and expense of a trial. However, we prepare every case as if it will go to trial to ensure we are negotiating from a position of strength.

How much does it cost to hire a birth injury lawyer?

At Wapner Newman, we handle birth injury cases on a contingency fee basis. This means you pay us nothing upfront. We only receive a fee if and when we win your case by securing a settlement or a jury verdict for you. Our fee is a percentage of the amount we recover.

Can I still have a case if I signed consent forms at the hospital?

Yes. A consent form is an agreement to accept the known risks of a procedure or medication. It is not consent for a healthcare provider to act negligently. You do not consent to a doctor prescribing the wrong dosage or a nurse administering the wrong drug.

A Path to Answers and Accountability

Get answers to what really happened, and how you can seek the compensation you need to secure you and your child’s future.

Call us today at (215) 569-0900 to begin the conversation.