Wrong Patient!

[ktwlpn, LPN]

So-you are having some problems and your doc sends you fro some studies.You wait-you fret-you get to your follow up appointment.You wait some more-the doc comes in to the exam room and takes you out to his private office.Since you are a nurse you know how these things are done so you kind of start to try to take deep even breaths.....He picks up the test results and says "We have 2 problems here....your CT scan......" and in a fog you say to yourself " CT scan? What CT scan?" Well-I did not HAVE A FREAKING CT SCAN..I had a translady partsl ultrasound...The radiology dept.sent my result along with another patients-together on one report.....The doc thought he was telling me that I have a big old suspicous lesion on a kidney....He calls the radiology dept to get MY U.S. report because we are not sure that the report in his hand was mine...So rather then going back in I am waiting for him to call.......If it was my report there is something there and I'll have to have -at the very least-a laproscopic biopsy because there was something in the U.S.I'm waiting to hear if it was mine or not.....

[begalli]

Uh huh.

Recently I helped my mom send for some of my deceased dad's medical records. In the two-inch stack of radiology/lab/endoscopy reports where the reports of a gentleman by a completely different name with completely different results.

I thought about reporting them and now I wish I had, but at the time grief was abounding and overwhelming. We shredded the documents that did not belong to us.

I personally had a false positive qualitative Hep C test come back. Turned out it was a lab error. The devastation and anguish I was put through during a month of additional testing was pure he**.

You know they say that ~98,000 people di/yr from medical mistakes.