Patients in the Hands of Various Errors
By Shelby Best
Patients have a lot of trust in their doctor’s hands when being diagnosed or having
surgery or a surgery performed by robotics. Patients trust their hospitals and doctors will use
clean and sterilized surgical equipment and will have the right patient information with them.
They trust their doctors have legitimate licenses and sometimes they do not.
Unthinkable errors by doctors and surgeons such as amputation the wrong leg or
removing organs from the wrong patient occur more than you think. Some mistakes are made
by mixing up patient medical records, x-rays and even biopsy samples. Over a 6 year study,
doctors in Colorado operated on the wrong patient at least 25 times on the wrong body part. At
least 12 million patients are misdiagnosed every year. Wrong diagnosis can subject the wrong
patient to the wrong treatments. Cancer misdiagnosis can cause loss of treatment time and can
make a treatable disease into a terminal one. Doctors do no spend enough time listening to
their patients.
Since the year 2000, doctors have done more than 1 million robotic surgeries. More
than 30% of complications during these surgeries were caused by either doctor error or a
malfunction of the robotic equipment. Death of a patient resulted 8.5% of the time. Doctor
errors were found in 21% of these robotic surgery problems and 14% were caused by robotic
failure. Researchers published a study in the Journal for Healthcare Quality this year found 245
surgery errors.
According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke 1 person out of
1 million worldwide will develop Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. This disease is a rare, incurable and
fatal brain disease that comes from surgeries performed using dirty equipment. A hospital in
North Carolina admits that 18 of its patients may have been exposed to this disease this year
and improperly cleaned surgical tools are to blame. In every state except New Jersey you do not
need to be certified to clean surgical tools. One hospital in New Jersey opened up surgical
suction tubes to Dr. Nancy Snyderman and they found dust, dirt and other debris. These tools
were headed to the operating room. You have to be certified to be a dog groomer, barber and a
tattoo artist but not to clear surgical equipment. If a dirty tool is found in an operating room the
FDA doesn’t require them to report it.
There are 10 shocking medical mistakes that CNN News reported.
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1) treating the wrong patient.
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2) surgical souvenirs- where surgical staff fails to count equipment used inside a
patient during an operation and these tools can get left inside the body.
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3) lost patients – patients with dementia can wander away and may become
trapped or die from hypothermia or dehydration.
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4) Fake doctors- con artist pretending to be doctors.
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5) The ER waiting game – ER’s are backed up when overcrowding occurs and
there aren’t enough beds.
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6) air bubbles in blood- when a hole in the patient’s chest isn’t sealed airtight
after a chest tube is removed. Air bubbles get sucked into the wound and cut off
blood supply to patients lungs, heart, kidneys and brain. If this isn’t corrected the
patient dies.
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7) operating on wrong body part – parts can be removed that aren’t supposed to
be, or operated on that don’t need surgery.
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8) infection infestation- doctors don’t wash their hands patients can die from
infections spread by hospital workers.
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9) Lookalike tubes a chest tube and a feeding tube can look a lot alike. Medicine
meant for the stomach goes into the chest.
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10) waking up during surgery – an under dose of anesthesia. The brain stays
awake while the muscles stay frozen, most patients don’t feel pain but some can
feel every poke, prod and cut.
But there is hope. these may be facts but 95% of doctors do get it right and there is
ways of preventing these things from happening. Don’t be afraid to ask questions tell
your doctor you have concerns. Play an active role in your health care.