Do you offer patients hot coffee or tea in post-op? If so, might you be risking a lawsuit?

Court records from Bexar County, Texas, show a pending case involving a patient who's filed a malpractice case against a surgery center after she "requested and was given [a] cup of hot coffee to drink … was unable to control or hold [the] cup, spilled [it] onto [her] chest, and suffered severe burns."

According to the case summary, she was in the recovery area after a surgical procedure and "under the effects of sedation" at the time.

In an Outpatient Surgery Magazine readers' poll this year, slightly more than half (50.3%) of nearly 200 respondents said they serve patients coffee or tea in post-op.

The case is Leeb v. Santa Rosa Physicians Ambulatory Surgery Center. Calls from Outpatient Surgery Magazine to lawyers representing both parties were not returned.

Jim Burger