Emergency Room Errors

Hospital emergency rooms are high-stress areas with each newly-arrived patient bringing unpredictable problems and needing quick and appropriate medical care. The staff must think quickly on their feet and yet stay calm. They must hurry all their actions and yet remember every required or useful test or procedure that each patient needs. When attending to the latest arrival, they must not forget or neglect others who still need something else done.

So it isn’t surprising that errors are made or that some of them are fatal. However, JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) has published an article stating that more than 225,000 people die every year because of medical malpractice. This makes it the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

Granted, not all medical malpractice takes place in emergency rooms, but far too much does. In some areas understaffing is a problem; in others it is lack of medical equipment. Regardless of what the reason is for the malpractice, if it happens to you, do consult a <a onClick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/article_exit_link');" href=http://www.njmedlaw.com/>medical malpractice lawyer</a> as soon as you can.

A Plethora of Frequent Medical Errors

• Failure to diagnose is one of the most dangerous errors, especially when there is cancer present. Successful cancer treatment depends on an early start: before the tumor is too large or the cancer has spread to other body areas. Misdiagnosis is equally dangerous; it leads to inappropriate treatments that leave the real problem untreated.
• Patient dumping is an error that has been in the news recently. Emergency room patients were forgotten in the rush to treat other patients. That has been a fatal error due to untreated respiratory or heart problems. It can also allow secondary brain injuries to occur. The original brain injury must be swiftly identified and measures must then be taken to prevent a secondary brain injury. An example of that would be a brain injury involving bleeding in the vision area. If that is not quickly identified and the bleeding reduced, vision can then be impaired, perhaps permanently.
• Emergency room errors are not committed only by doctors and nurses. There are also laboratory errors where a lab technician does the wrong test for an emergency room patient, mixes up the records, or contaminates a sample.

Failure of sterile technique, failure to properly monitor a patient, and failure to consult a specialist – these errors all leave a patient to suffer the consequences of a medical professional’s lack of attention or care. When we enter an emergency room, we are trusting our health and even our lives to total strangers and relying on them to follow accepted standards of care. When they fail to do that, the health consequences can be devastating.