When you go to a doctor, you expect that they will make you better — not make you worse. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.
In this blog post, we are going to focus on some of the mistakes doctors and other medical professionals make. This is not to scare you or deter you from going to the doctor, but to rather arm you with knowledge.
When the unthinkable happens
It is certainly unpleasant to think about, but medical errors happen. And when they happen, it’s the patient who suffers.
The following are some of the more life-altering and even deadly mistakes that can happen:
- Insertion of tubing in the wrong port: Intubation tubes look very similar to feeding tubes. However, a trained medical professional should always be able to tell the difference. The similarity should not be an excuse to the trained eye.
- Wrong-site operations: Prior to surgery, all medical staff involved should be triple checking — and even marking – the location site. However, while it seems like this would be common sense and any easy mistake to avoid, wrong-site operations happen. This means not only is the original problem not addressed, but the patient now has a whole new set of issues.
- Medication mistakes: Prescriptions and doses matter — a lot. Doctors, nurses and anyone involved in the dispensing or administering of medication should always be checking to make sure the right medication in the proper dose is being given to the right patient.
Of course, these are just a small sampling of the types of things that can go wrong. Other common scenarios involve not taking a patient’s complaints seriously or even leaving items behind — like surgical sponges — during surgery.
No matter what the medical error is though, know that as the patient this is not your fault. And while you can certainly educate yourself and advocate before a procedure, the doctor or medical professional is ultimately responsible when their mistakes leads to your injury.