Workers’ comp benefits denied: Court explains why employee’s claim was rejected

Alaska’s highest court affirmed the denial of workers’ comp benefits for a school nurse who alleged that she suffered from PTSD after unsuccessful attempts to resuscitate a choking student.

In 2014, an elementary school student ran into the school nurse’s office screaming because a child was choking on his lunch. The nurse ran to assist the boy, who was turning blue when she arrived.

The nurse tried to clear the boy’s airway and helped perform CPR until emergency responders arrived. The boy was rushed to a hospital, where he died.

Nurse suffers injury, seeks comp benefits

During the resuscitation efforts, the nurse was exposed to the boy’s bodily fluids. Because of this, she had medical tests to screen for serious diseases shortly after the incident. Her results came back negative.

The school district reported the nurse’s injury to the state’s workers’ comp board, indicating that it affected “multiple body parts,” with the cause of injury shown as “absorption, ingestion or inhalation.”

As such, the nurse received temporary total disability for about three months.

Doctor notes excused the nurse from work because of “on-site trauma” and “situational stress.” She sought counseling after the incident and was initially diagnosed with adjustment disorder. The diagnosis was later changed to include PTSD.

The nurse then sought workers’ comp benefits for mental health problems caused by the incident. She said that she suffered PTSD due to being exposed to the boy’s bodily fluids, the resulting risk of disease and the mental stress of the incident.

The state’s workers’ compensation board denied the nurse’s claim, finding “the exposure to bodily fluid was not a sufficient physical injury to trigger a presumption of compensability” and that the mental stress caused by the incident wasn’t “sufficiently extraordinary or unusual to merit compensation.”

Moreover, the board heard testimony from the experts and was “most persuaded by the employer’s medical expert,” who testified that the nurse’s mental health problems were the result of a pre-existing mental condition rather than the incident.

The nurse appealed the state board’s decision. The case reached the Alaska Supreme Court.

Board’s 2 Errors Do Not Change Outcome

The state supreme court said the board made two errors, but that didn’t affect the outcome of the decision.

First, the board “failed to recognize the link between exposure to bodily fluids and mental distress over the risk of serious disease,” the court explained.

Second, the board “failed to consider the particular details of the child’s death and the nurse’s involvement” when it determined that the stress of responding to a choking child at school wasn’t “sufficiently extraordinary” to merit benefits for a mental injury.

Despite these errors, the court affirmed the board’s finding that the nurse was not entitled to benefits.

Why not? Based on the testimony of the medical expert, the board also found the incident was not the cause of the nurse’s mental health problems. The court said it “must respect the board’s credibility determinations and weight it gives conflicting evidence.”

Thus, the court affirmed the denial of benefits.

Patterson v. Matanuska-Susitna Borough School Dist., No. S-17958, 2022 WL 17881551 (Alaska 12/23/22).