EMT Claims Stretcher Injured Her Wrist

An emergency medical technician has filed a personal injury suit against Williams A. Ambulance and two of its employees, claiming that her wrist snapped as she was trying to adjust a stretcher.

According to the suit filed by Williams A. Ambulance EMT Tracey L. Horning in Texas’ Jefferson County District Court on April 7, she and her partner were dispatched to retrieve a patient at Jasper Memorial Hospital on April 20, 2007.

The suit says that in order to transfer a patient from a hospital bed to a stretcher, the stretcher’s height has to be adjusted to height similar to that of the bed. Horning says that she was trying to adjust the stretcher’s height but was unable to get the height mechanism to release.

Horning claims that when she made a second attempted to release the height mechanism by applying more force, her wrist popped, causing her immediate pain.

The suit claims that Horning’s partner then assisted her and was able to get the release to engage, but Horning was no longer able to use her hands because of the pain in her wrist.

Horning and her partner delivered the patient to St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont before she returned to Jasper and showed her supervisor, Glen Blake, who was named as a defendant in the suit, the swelling in her wrist and hand. The suit says she was ordered to go to the Jasper Memorial Hospital emergency room, where she received treatment and was released.

The suit alleges negligence on the part of Williams A. Ambulance, Rob Caroll Jr., and Blank for failure to provide Horning with a safe workplace, failure to maintain the stretcher, failure to provide safe, working equipment, and failure to warn.

Horning seeks unspecified damages.