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Who want's a personal account?
Brother needed a gastrostomy tube replaced - surgeon placed a foley catheter by mistake. No port to administer medications through, which was necessary in lieu of poor peripheral vein access. Received no medications to control existing seizure disorder for 2 days. Foley catheters go in the bladder, not the stomach. This was a surgeon who said SI segmentation order is Jejunum, Duodenum, Ileum. I had to correct her: that's when I knew something would go wrong.
Yeah, they couldn't even round out their list with real medical mistakes so they throw in some non-physician stories and an Alzheimer's patient wandering off. Seems like a stretch to me.
They were talking about all medical errors, not just those by physicians. I would consider it an error on the part of both the doctors and nurses to lose track of a severely senile patient and not notice for days. They have a responsibility to care for patients who are totally dependent on others, like children and the elderly. That includes looking for them when they inexplicably go missing and can't take care of themselves.
Half of these aren't even medical mistakes and only a few of them could be really called "shocking". Some of them are just stupid...some dude fractures his skull and breaks his leg SKYDIVING and then picks up a nosocomial infection?
Who want's a personal account?
Brother needed a gastrostomy tube replaced - surgeon placed a foley catheter by mistake. No port to administer medications through, which was necessary in lieu of poor peripheral vein access. Received no medications to control existing seizure disorder for 2 days. Foley catheters go in the bladder, not the stomach. This was a surgeon who said SI segmentation order is Jejunum, Duodenum, Ileum. I had to correct her: that's when I knew something would go wrong.
Foleys can be used as a temporary g-tube, until the correct g-tube replacement is found. It's usually the ER doc that places a Foley and the surgeon can replace it with a real one in the office.
Yeah, except this wasn't an ER doc - it was a staff GI surgeon. After my brother had been admitted. 4 days after visiting the ER.
Did you Google the patients case or is the mobile version abridged? I don't think I'm reading the same things you guys are lol
Can you see the slideshow at the top? Might not be able to on the mobile version but that's where all the info about each case actually is.
GI and surgery are two different specialties.
Again, Foleys can be used as a temporary replacement for G-tubes. Don't know why it was used in your situation, but it's not a ridiculous thing to do as long as it is eventually replaced with a real G-tube.
It was not done with intent of replacing with a G-tube, however. Because it doesn't take 5 months to recover from that surgery, and thats when a G-tube was placed, and it was not a scheduled placement. interestingly enough, it was in the emergency room, because the foley catheter popped out.
6. Mistake: Air bubbles in blood
Cause: The hole in a patient's chest isn't sealed airtight after a chest tube is removed.
Consequences: Air bubbles get sucked into the wound and cut off blood supply to the patient's lungs, heart, kidneys and brain. Left uncorrected the patient dies.
Prevention: If you have a chest tube in you, ask how you should be positioned when the line comes out.
Example case: Blake Fought
Air embolus from chest tube removal? I'll give you residual pneumo, but it sounds like the chest tube was in the aorta.
This is easily one of the worst articles I've ever read.
I think that all the time.This may be a viewpoint that is not received well but.....
has anyone considered that by the time people land in the hospital (inpatient) that most of the time they were going to die anyways without intervention? Medical mistakes should absolutely be minimized and they are tragic, but from a certain point of view many of these people essentially ended up where they would have been anyways without doctors involved. This has always just been a point in the back of my mind when I talk about medical mistakes.
Most surgeons will get sued at least once in their lifetime. A general surgeon has a 99% chance of being sued, and a neurosurgeon is the same. After that, OB/gyn and anesthesia are not far behind.I have a few quetions
1) is it true that most doctors will make at least one bad (severly reduce quality of life in his patient) mistake in their career?
2) will most doctors get sued at least once in their career?
3) how many doctors make a fatal error (any type of doc, surgeons slipping etc or doc giving wrong medicine,etc)
I'm not sure if there are numbers on these things but I am still curious
Most surgeons will get sued at least once in their lifetime. A general surgeon has a 99% chance of being sued, and a neurosurgeon is the same. After that, OB/gyn and anesthesia are not far behind.
Will you cause a patient's death? Maybe. You'll almost certainly miss something or make the wrong decision in a life-or-death situation, and it might accelerate the patient's death or fail to slow it down. You will not always have time to sit down and plan things out in a neat and organized fashion, and some split-second decisions will be wrong (or at least sub-optimal).
Yeah, it wasn't really accurate. The patient in question actually had a central line that was not pulled correctly, and he did get an air embolus as a result of the nurse's mistake.
(As an aside, the patient in question was the son of a former SDN moderator: http://studentdoctor.net/the-blake-e-fought-memorial-scholarship/)
along these same lines, did you see the thread about the doctor who was found 60% liable for the cop who died of a heart condition during a 3-way with a hooker? "Failed to properly diagnose the heart condition". This is somewhat what i was getting at earlier. It is unreasonable to expect us to catch 100% of everything 100% of the time. So I think it is ridiculous to also hold us liable if a condition goes undetected. By odds alone we are inevitably playing a game of russian rouletteI think that all the time.
The number of deaths is not at all the most relevant measurement. What would be really useful is the number of years of quality life lost, and in how many patients. When an 89-year old fractures their hip, has emergency surgery, then has an MI, then spends two weeks in the ICU, and acquires a UTI, becomes septic and dies, then I don't really consider that the same as "Oops, we gave your otherwise healthy child 100,000 units of heparin instead of a 10 unit flush, and she just had a fatal head bleed."
For one, the elderly patient in such a scenario would have died without our help, so there's a difference in "We tried dozens of interventions that weren't working, and then one came with a fatal complication" versus "Oops, sorry about that! Cut off the wrong leg!"
They were talking about all medical errors, not just those by physicians. I would consider it an error on the part of both the doctors and nurses to lose track of a severely senile patient and not notice for days. They have a responsibility to care for patients who are totally dependent on others, like children and the elderly. That includes looking for them when they inexplicably go missing and can't take care of themselves.
along these same lines, did you see the thread about the doctor who was found 60% liable for the cop who died of a heart condition during a 3-way with a hooker? "Failed to properly diagnose the heart condition". This is somewhat what i was getting at earlier. It is unreasonable to expect us to catch 100% of everything 100% of the time. So I think it is ridiculous to also hold us liable if a condition goes undetected. By odds alone we are inevitably playing a game of russian roulette
You should look into the background of the doctor's plan a little more...I guess the cardiologist scheduled the guy to have a stress test the next day he saw the pt but the pt wanted to put it off for a week SO he could enjoy his time. Also, I think I remember seeing something about the doctor providing instructions to "avoid strenuous activity" but was dinged for not being specific. All in all, a pretty ridiculous case and I don't think there was any failure of planning or diagnosing on the doctor's part. He just got bent over by the system.
right
I didnt know all the ins and outs of that case, but I was saying that this case was ridiculous. My post was more on the double standards that patients hold.