Do you know of anyone that died because of Hospital or Doctor error?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Beside the Dallas Ebola patient that the ER sent home with antibiotics, :rolleyes:

Nearly 8 years ago the ER contributed to my neighbor’s death and it still makes me angry. She had inherited her mom’s house and lived next door to me. She wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer but very good-hearted. Never married and no kids. She worked for years as a Nurses assistant staying with elderly, home bound patients overnight. I got the story of her death from her brother. She had suffered female problems for years and had surgery. Not sure what procedure, probably a hysterectomy. Went home for a few days and got to feeling bad. Went to the ER on a weekend and they treated like garbage. Basically giving her the you’re wasting our time attitude. She went home and got sicker and sicker. Another neighbor finally convinced her to call an ambulance Mon night. She died in the hospital the next afternoon. Some infection that had reach sepsis.

Yeah, the poor woman had medicaid or no insurance. I’m not sure. She should have simply driven to another ER that Sat, but she didn’t.

The buggers at that ER got away with it. Her only family was her brother and he was in no position to hire a lawyer and go after them.

You got any similar stories of incompetent or uncaring ER’s or Doctors?

2

I know someone who died of an allergic reaction to a drug he told the doctor he was allergic to. The doctor gave the drug via injection, guy had an allergic reaction. Died.

3

I once dated a woman whose now-adult son was born premature and had to be put on oxygen. They put the tube down his esophagus and he was oxygen-starved for a critical length of time, and though he survived, he was rendered permanently deaf, blind, and intellectually disabled.

The money from the malpractice suit went into a trust fund which ensures he’ll receive the care he needs and be taken care of for the rest of his life, but I can’t even imagine what his thought processes are like or how the world must seem to him.

4

My ex grilled the anesthesiologist about the drug she was going to use, getting from her a smart ass answer. It turned out she was allergic to it, which she had mentioned from the get go. Not even an apology. The surgery being elective, she renounced to it, afraid that there could be further blunders.

My father died due to the medical staff not paying enough attention. He had been hospitalized for a broken femur, and due to the lack of bed in rehabilitation, was kept for some more days at the hospital in a different service that had empty beds. He began to experience issues and pain, but it wasn’t investigated. He died three days latter of multiples internal hemoragges.

The hospital had some excuses, however :

-His hemoragges weren’t related (at least not directly) to his broken femur, making figuring out what was going wrong not blatantly obvious

-Like most people of his generation, he didn’t complain enough nor insist. And my mother being relatively shy, she didn’t, either, even though she knew something was really wrong. Only when my sister-in-law was made aware of the issue did she go all over the medical staff. But by then it was too late, he died on the same day.

-It was over the week-end : reduced staff

-As I wrote, my father had been transfered to another service (cardiology) that had empty beds to wait for some days. He wasn’t supposed to have any significant issue or to require actual medical care by the cardiology staff.

Something similar happened to my ex’s mother. She was in some medicalized recovery home when she began to experience pains. There was no doctor present, and the nurse didn’t think it was anything serious. And like my father she didn’t complain much. Only when her son, a pharmacist, visited her later in the day were the emergency services called, but she died within half an hour.

The two later examples resulted in a death, but were somewhat excusable. The first one, however, with the anesthesiologist scoffing at my ex for daring to double guess her while preparing to inject her with a drug she was allergic to (and it appeared on the anesthesiologist’s documentation), is totally inexcusable, despite not resulting in any damage, and is a textbook example of some doctors’ hubris.

5

I almost died at age 14 after a successful appendicitis surgery. Doctor left a sponge inside of me and it caused an infection that caused me to go from 135 lbs to 95 lbs in a matter of two weeks before they got it under control. All we got was a verbal we’re sorry for almost killing you, glad you didn’t die.

6

A friend of my families died due to EMT/Emergency room screw ups.

Short story: He was sitting on a motorcycle in a parking lot. A car ran into him. He was hurt fairly badly but not badly enough to die. The EMTs showed up and he went to the emergency room. Between the EMTs and the Docs in the ER, well, they killed him.

I don’t know the full details, I was rather young when this happened. I do know that his parents sued the EMTs and the hospital (to ensure that something was done about the problem, they didn’t need nor really want any money) and got a large amount of money. IIRC, the money was donated to charity.

My own story: I went into an ER as I had an infected lymph node. It was painful as hell and rather large. I get in and after a long wait I see the Doc. Note, I had talked to a nurse but no one did anything else. The Doc came over, looked at it and said "Ok, I’m gonna drain it.’. I said, ‘Um, can you give me some pain medication first?’. She said "Oh, you’ll be fine with what they gave you’ and I said ‘They didn’t give me anything’. And the Doc said ‘Oh, you will be fine’ then cut. And I screamed. And then she looked at the notes and realized I wasn’t lying when I said I hadn’t been given anything for the pain. The Doc and the rest of the staff was exceedingly nice after that.

Slee

7

I’m having a procedure done today, so this thread is a real pick me up. :frowning:

8

The 15-year-old son of a friend died after undergoing anesthesia for a routine procedure. He went in to have some pins put into his wrist to stabilize a cracked bone (he cracked his wrist playing football, so he was generally a very healthy kid), and he had general anesthesia for the procedure. That part went fine, and they moved him to recovery.

In the recovery room, somehow, they connected the oxygen supply to his “exhale” tube, so he couldn’t breathe out. He just lay there and quietly smothered to death while nobody watched. From what I understand, the carbon dioxide buildup was so severe that his skin “crackled” when you touched him. So basically, they suffocated a healthy 15-year-old kid with plain old incompetence and inattention.

Afterward I wondered, why is it even possible to connect the oxygen to the “out” tube? Shouldn’t one be a circle and one be a square, or something?

9

My father. He had a second emergency surgery for murky reasons and ended up in a terminal coma. During all the legal followup, the second surgery disappeared from the records. Even though there were evident holes in the chart, someone carefully removed all the material indicating there’d been a second round.

The court was indifferent.

10

In the late 70s my granfather was on his last legs at the hospital fighting lung cancer. He had a breathing tube and when it fell out an alarm would go off and a nurse would come to put it back.
Apparently one nurse though it was too annoying to the other patients to have this alarm going off all the time and shut it off.
I was only 9 at the time but my sister showed me a newspaper article about it years later.
The family never sued since they figured he didn’t have much time left anyway.

11

Doctors and Hospitals do a great job and improve people’s lives most of the time. The US health system is the best in the world. The error rate is very low.

12

A friend of mine almost died because … this was a long time ago so I can’t remember accurately, but I think she had some kind of kidney infection and the doctor told her parents she just had the flu and to drink plenty of Gatorade. Whatever it was it severely exacerbated her condition. Her mother found her turning blue in her bed. Thankfully the ambulance got there in time. She survived without any ill effects, but it was close.

The original doctor fled the country before they could sue.

13

Way back in the days of my youth a friend died in the dentist’s chair. He tried doing full anesthetic and had never been trained for it. As I mentioned in another thread, I still get the cold sweats just being near a dentist.

Had an uncle die from a ruptured ulcer the doctor treated with paragoric or some such.
Funny thing back then (and we’re talking late 1960s not 1860s) is no one ever thought to sue. We were just glad to have a doctor rather than run into “the city” to the hospital. Even knowing he wasn’t that good, we still kept going to him.

14

I broke my wrist when I was 13 and the doctor insisted on resetting it without giving me so much as a local aesthetic; he just had his nurse & my mom hold be down. Which turned out to be a mistake b/c one of my legs got free and I gave the nurse a bloody nose. Then afterward I kicked the doctor in the groin while screaming profanity at him. My mother was not amused with him, my grandmother thought the whole thing was hilarious when she heard about it, and all my follow up was with a different doctor in the same practice. Oh, was the nurse was the mother of one of my friends.

15

Sure: my sister. She had chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a disease that rarely kills the person who has it. A couple of years ago, her doctor, who should have already retired, misinterpreted her routine bloodwork and told my sister that she needed chemo. Instead of getting a second opinion, she agreed. Chemo killed her immune system, of course, so the doctor had her on anti-viral meds. Then, inexplicably, she took her off of them and my sister came down with shingles all over her head, which was excruciatingly painful.

Chemo treatments continued, and she was less and less able to fight off infections and other problems. When she asked the doctor about transfusions, the doctor brushed it off as unnecessary. She began having problems reading, concentrating and remembering how to do things. Her son came over one day to check on her and found her barely able to stand. He rushed her to the doctor. Luckily her regular doc was on vacation; the doc who was filling in for her did a blood draw and was shocked at the results. He told her that he had never seen a person with those readings still upright and immediately had her transferred to the transfusion center. After going over her full history, he told her that she should never have had chemo in the first place, as it wasn’t warranted with those initial readings.

Well, the inevitable was on the way. She developed an infection in her bowel. Because of blood thinners, the new doc told her she wouldn’t survive the operation to remove the tissue. It was a relief for my Sis, as she now would be able to see her friends and family, which she hadn’t been able to do for over a year because of infection risk.

Long story short, she died a year ago. That fucking quack killed her with her original diagnosis for chemo. I wish they had sued for malpractice.

16

I know you’re trying to make GreenElf feel better, but false reassurances are still false.

440,000 people die of medical mistakes in hospitals every year. Tens of thousands more die from medical mistakes outside of hospitals. It’s the third leading cause of death in the United States.

Compared to the rest of the world, we’re about average.

If you want to help, offer some concrete advice as to how a patient can help the staff reduce medical errors:

Make sure they know your allergies and have placed an allergy band on your wrist - on the SAME wrist as your barcode, if the hospital has a barcode system. That makes it harder to miss it when they scan the barcode to give you your meds.

Insist that the nurse verify 2 patient identifiers before they give you meds, before they take you anywhere for a test, before they begin a surgery. Your name and birthdate are acceptable identifiers. I once had an Ann E. Smith and and Anne Smith in clinicals. Their rooms were back to back. Ann E. was allergic to one of Anne’s meds. My teacher watched me like a hawk, and I avoided killing either one, but it was the best lesson in patient identification I could have gotten.

If you’re getting surgery, ask them if they have a Surgical Safety Checklist and if they use it. At the very least, insist on a “Time-Out” before they begin. Everyone in the room should introduce themselves by role and name (“I’m Cindy, the circulating nurse”). That should include you (“I’m GreenElf, I’m here for a right knee replacement.”) They should verify your identity, the planned procedure and the site of the procedure including side of the body. The site of the surgery should be marked with an ink that doesn’t get rubbed off by anything they wipe you with to clean the area.

When you’re spending time laying around in a hospital room, try to have someone with you. If you don’t have to ring for the nurse every time you drop the kleenex, you’ll feel better about ringing the nurse when you actually need him, like when you’re in pain or you have to get up to pee and need help.

If the nurse is getting your medications ready or setting up tools for a procedure, don’t talk to her. Distractions are deadly. When everything is set up, then you can (and should) ask questions.

If you have a problem with your nurse, ask to speak to the Charge Nurse. If the Charge Nurse can’t help you, ask to speak to the Nursing Supervisor. If the Nursing Supervisor can’t help you, ask to speak to the Patient Advocate. Don’t ask to speak to the doctor to complain about a nurse. The doctors are not the boss of the nurses; they have their own chain of command.

(Likewise, if you have a problem with a doctor, ask to speak to the Attending Physician. If the Attending can’t help you, ask to speak to the Medical Director. If the Medical Director can’t help you, ask to speak to the Patient Advocate.)

Ask for a consultation with the Medical Social Worker before you go home. They can help explain many things and help you find community resources like home health care or rental services for walkers and wheelchairs, if you need them.

Do not let them discharge you until you know exactly what medications to take when you get home, exactly what your physical activity limitations are and when they expire, and exactly when to return to what doctor for follow up. Yes, you want to go home, but you don’t want to go home and accidentally create your own medical error because you didn’t understand your discharge instructions.
Do I know anyone who has died as the result of a medical error? Oh, yes. But this is one time when my professional code of ethics restrains me from sharing. They’re not my stories to share.

17

^
Sometimes I wish we had a like button.

Not dead, but my best friend now has stage three kidney failure after being admitted to hospital for a bladder infection and having the wrong type of IV antibiotic administered. (It was in her medical records.) She spent over a month in that hospital, much of that time in the ICU, about six years ago.

A month ago she had a heart cath, and it was somehow missed that her kidneys didn’t work that well in filtering out the dye and the meds, so she ended up with a massive OD of Dilaudid. She is still clumsy and losing words.

This is a smart woman who takes a great deal of responsibility for her own health, and she is kicking herself for not reminding her nursing staff that there were certain meds she cannot tolerate. But jeez, it really shouldn’t be all her responsibility, you know?

18

I had cellulitus in 2008, which the ER doctor diagnosed as “a rash” and gave me prednisone to deal with. I complained it was an immuno-suppressant, she offered reassurance of her expertise. Two days later my arm was swollen enormously and painfully during my annual physical with my regular doctor, who completely lost it when she said only an idiot would dx the cellulitus as “a rash” and mentioned she was pretty sure I had endocarditis, which I did, requiring months of recovery and open heart surgery. I would be dead without my regular doctor being all over it and correct at every juncture.

19

What an awful story. As a resident physician, I have seen patients who have died at least partly or entirely because of medical error.

I have to say I’m pretty confused by this story for several reasons. A healthy young patient moved to recovery after uneventful surgery would not still be intubated, and generally the only oxygen supply they would have would be a low pressure nasal canula. The only consequence of of not connecting that properly to the source in the recovery room would be a chance that his oxygen levels would drop. The patient would be breathing out completely normally through their nose and mouth.

On the other hand, if he were still intubated connected to the anesthesia tubing circuit, there is no real difference between the “in” tube and the “out” tube. The plastic tubing which runs from the patient to the machine has two separate pipes, as you can see in this image, but it doesn’t matter which is connected to the in or the out part of the machine. Effectively, there is no such thing as an in tube or an out tube.

The description of “skin crackling” is a symptom called subcutaneous emphysema. This can happen for several reasons during surgery, especially laparoscopic surgery, for example if the CO2 used to inflate the abdomen is incorrectly applied, as in the case mentioned here. I’d think that anesthetic complications leading to subcutaneous anesthesia might include severe trauma to the airway during intubation, or malfunction of the valves in the anesthesia machine, which could lead to very high pressure in the lungs as the gas has nowhere to escape, which could lead to severe lung damage and subcutaneous emphysema. However, the description you were given of subcutaneous emphysema occurring as a result of inattention to a healthy patient in the recovery room after an uneventful surgery doesn’t make much sense. Incidentally, the various gasses used in the OR (oxygen, air, nitrous oxide) all have pipes which are incompatible with each other so that they can’t be incorrectly connected to the supply source.

20

I’m pretty sure that any hospital in America which gets money from Medicare (in other words, just about all of them) is required to do that. If you find yourself in a hospital where you have to insist that they do a time-out prior to surgery, I’d advise you to find a different hospital. Also, the site must be previously marked by the surgeon outside of the OR, not during the timeout.