Medical errors the 3rd leading cause of death??

Susie2310 · May 25, 2016

I saw a post on the internet that said that care would improve if a trial lawyer was present when care was provided. I agree.

allnurses Guide · May 25, 2016

I saw a post on the internet that said that care would improve if a trial lawyer was present when care was provided. I agree.

I think lawyers are one of the biggest obstacles to quality care.

Susie2310 · May 26, 2016

The general public have the power to contact their elected representatives to voice their concerns/complaints and to work for change. Thanks to the internet it is not hard to find out how to do this.

DoGoodThenGo · May 26, 2016

I saw a post on the internet that said that care would improve if a trial lawyer was present when care was provided. I agree.

Attorneys do not need to be present; fear of them and or otherwise legal action already had infiltrated physician's practices and or hospitals, this has been going for some time now. It is one reason behind charting enough for a facility to get paid, but not enough for them to be sued.

Be it from arrogance, ignorance, carelessness, malice or whatever errors have occurred in both medicine and nursing professions since their earliest days. Ditto for hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Neither nursing nor medicine are perfect sciences, however the general public over the decades has come to expect just that, perfection.

Thanks to modern technology including the 24/7 news media world we live in everyone is an arm chair quarterback. A plane crashes and you have within minutes scores of "professionals" going on about what could, should or didn't happen and how if "THEY" were in charge......

Ditto for medical/nursing errors.

Staying with Rory Staunton and NYU while it does seem as if the child was doomed the moment his parents brought him to that ER, no one can actually say the outcome would have been any different after any of the "iffa, coulda, shoulda" actions or theories everyone is putting out in the media.

Perhaps if the child's doctor had put him on an antibiotic at once after he suffered that wound the strep would have been knocked down and that may have been that. But we don't routinely give out antibiotics for what then appeared to be just a simple cut.

Yes, lots of mistakes were made in the Staunton case, and as a result NYU, those ER physicians and nurses suffered greatly. Of course whatever happened there pales to the loss suffered by the child's parents, but if each medical or nursing error is going to end up with world wide media coverage and or those involved publically named and humiliated you are going to get more of what happens already; things won't be reported and or under reporting. Nurses will be quietly transferred or discharged, staff doctors reprimanded and so forth but that won't get at the root of the problem.

Susie2310 · May 26, 2016

Attorneys do not need to be present; fear of them and or otherwise legal action already had infiltrated physician's practices and or hospitals, this has been going for some time now. It is one reason behind charting enough for a facility to get paid, but not enough for them to be sued.

The fear of lawyers (absent the actual presence of lawyers) still isn't manifesting in care that meets the standards of care on many occasions. So fear of lawyers by itself appears to be insufficient.

ShaneTeam · May 26, 2016

I saw a post on the internet that said that care would improve if a trial lawyer was present when care was provided. I agree.

I disagree. That would be the exact opposite of what is needed. I still feel if they are willing to shell out money for other causes of death, why not this? The doctors and nurses are human. Thankfully, most of our mistakes don't kill. It still staggers me when it is put in actual numbers, instead of percentages. I do not mean it to mean "only" 1.6%. It just shows that there is either no mistake, or a non-lethal mistake made 98.4% of the time. It is still unacceptable.

If attorneys are added to the mix, it would be much worse. I don't think it will be possible to get better care by having someone look over the shoulder of a practitioner, waiting for the next mistake so they can sue. Actually, in my opinion, all that will lead to is a bunch of practitioners with the Ferguson syndrome.

ShaneTeam · May 26, 2016

Again, on a side note, more networks seem to be putting their spin on this. 5/25/16 Headline news had a special called "Top 25 Medical Errors". It was a 60 minute show.

Susie2310 · May 26, 2016

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If attorneys are added to the mix, it would be much worse. I don't it will be possible to get better care by having someone look over the shoulder of a practitioner, waiting for the next mistake so they can sue. Actually, in my opinion, all that will lead to is a bunch of practitioners with the Ferguson syndrome.

Having a lawyer present would make nurses/physicians attentive to ensuring the care they provide meets the Standards of Care and that their charting truthfully reflects the care they have actually given. I'm pretty sure if a lawyer had been present watching the ER physician preparing to discharge my family member (who had previously been discharged from a hospital stay within the last 30 days) who had sepsis and who required three days of inpatient care with antibiotics and IV fluids (the physician fortunately changed their mind after they had traumatized us by talking about discharging my family member home to receive antibiotics and had even started the discharge paperwork, and admitted my family member to a monitored unit), that the lawyer would have whispered CMS and EMTALA in the physician's ear.

Profit, profit, profit. Volume of patients. Avoiding 30 day readmission penalties. And so on, and so on.

allnurses Guide · May 26, 2016

Having a lawyer present would make nurses/physicians attentive to ensuring the care they provide meets the Standards of Care and that their charting truthfully reflects the care they have actually given. I'm pretty sure if a lawyer had been present watching the ER physician preparing to discharge my family member (who had previously been discharged from a hospital stay within the last 30 days) who had sepsis and who required three days of inpatient care with antibiotics and IV fluids (the physician fortunately changed their mind after they had traumatized us by talking about discharging my family member home to receive antibiotics and had even started the discharge paperwork, and admitted my family member to a monitored unit), that the lawyer would have whispered CMS and EMTALA in the physician's ear.
Profit, profit, profit. Volume of patients. Avoiding 30 day readmission penalties. And so on, and so on.

Sure we can have a lawyer at the bedside and everyone can get full-body CT scans for every complaint, I mean why not, already 30-50% of CT scans performed are medically unnecessary and use has risen to over $100 billion in cost. Then in another few decades we can have other lawyers suing the current lawyers over the increase in cancer rates.

Better yet, why not leave the lawyers out and just let every patient dictate their own plan of care? You have a cut toe, what would you like? An MRI? Sure thing. Then no one is to blame right? Except for the fact higher patient satisfaction scores are associated with higher M&M.

You realize even in the situation you described, discharging your family member may have very well met the standard of care. It's a terribly inaccurate measure of medical negligence.

Let providers practice the way they were trained to rather than by the way a lawyer, or patient, or administrator thinks they should.

Susie2310 · May 26, 2016

You realize even in the situation you described, discharging your family member may have very well met the standard of care. It's a terribly inaccurate measure of medical negligence.

Knowing what I know about my family member's medical condition etc., it was entirely appropriate for my family member to be admitted as an inpatient, and this was clear by the treatment the hospitalists provided. Why make such a comment when you know nothing about our situation?

allnurses Guide · May 26, 2016

Knowing what I know about my family member's medical condition etc., it was entirely appropriate for my family member to be admitted as an inpatient, and this was clear by the treatment the hospitalists provided. Why make such a comment when you know nothing about our situation?

How long have you been a ED physician?

That's the problem with trying to judge medical negligence by "standard of care": it doesn't matter what you know, or I know, or even what the attending hospital knows, standard of care is determined by what a reasonable provider in the same scenario would have done (in this case what another ED physician would have done). In simple terms it's what the bare minimum is and that's not a good way to decide, as is evidenced by what your family member went through.

Susie2310 · May 26, 2016

How long have you been a ED physician?
That's the problem with trying to judge medical negligence by "standard of care": it doesn't matter what you know, or I know, or even what the attending hospital knows, standard of care is determined by what a reasonable provider in the same scenario would have done (in this case what another ED physician would have done). In simple terms it's what the bare minimum is and that's not a good way to decide, as is evidenced by what your family member went through.

BostonFNP you appear to be trying to give me a Teaching. I politely refuse.