S/O Medical errors

[momz]

For some reason, I can't post the link. But CNBC has an article from Frebruary of this year claiming that medical errors is the third leading cause of death in the Untited States.

That statistic is staggering! Have you or someone you know experienced death from medical error? What about injury or illness due to error?

Please don't share anything that should be confidential. But with the numbers that are being reported, there's bound to be experience with this on the Disboards.

Do you have any thoughts as to why the numbers are so high?

 

[Pea-n-Me]

The numbers are high because medical treatment is extremely complicated, and care is provided by humans, who make errors, despite the technology of today.

It doesn't mean that people don't care. At least not the majority of providers. As a matter of fact, providers often are absolutely devastated when an error is made.

 

[soccerdad72]

I suppose it would depend on circumstances, but I would imagine many of those deaths may have been complicated procedures in the first place, where the chance of death was already high.

I don't think this is a case that would qualify in the stats you're talking about, but my sister's FIL was misdiagnosed by the VA hospital for many months as having minor stomach pains, only to find out eventually that it was cancer (and it had spread). Would they have been able to treat him if he was diagnosed when he first started complaining about his pain? Not sure, but not diagnosing him for a number of months certainly didn't help his chances (he passed away a few months after the cancer was found).

 

[jaybirdsmommy]

I think it's a combination of things - at least based on my experiences:

1. Medical procedures are complicated and mistakes happen, combined with:
2. Pressure to see more and more patients and get them in and out quicker so things get missed,
3. Reluctance to diagnose in the first place. It seems like it is becoming harder and harder to get diagnostic tests covered by insurance, which makes doctors reluctant to request them, which leads to illness going longer without treatment, which makes the patient come back and blame the doctor for not diagnosing fast enough.....

It took months for my Dad's cancer to be diagnosed, the doctor kept treating him for a kidney infection. Even after the scan came back showing there was defnitely something else going on it still took weeks before the doctor came out and said cancer and started treatment. Not that it would have made a difference, it was a particularly vicious cancer, but who knows if those extra weeks might have changed things.

 

[kmb584]

On a personal level, I can believe it.

In January 2017 my mother had an endovascular procedure done to clip a small brain aneurysm. The coiling itself was, and still is, fine but just about 2 1/2 hours post-op, my mom went unresponsive. She did not respond to verbal or tactile stimuli and a stat CT was ordered. That revealed a large intraparenchymal hemorrhage and she had blood pooled in the entire left hemisphere of her brain. She then underwent an emergency decompressive craniectomy and was placed in a medically induced coma, on a ventilator in ICU for 15 days. Her left skull was placed in frozen storage and replaced almost 6 months to the day later. She's paralyzed on her right side, suffers from expressive aphasia with a vocabulary of approximately ten words as well as long and short-term memory loss and is incontinent of both bowel and bladder.

When all of this happened, a team of neurosurgeons told us her chance of surviving and waking up when they stopped her propofol was < 5%. They said she'd never pass a breathing trial and would require life-long intervention. We were prepared to make the end of life decision, but mom apparently had other plans.

The cause of the bleed? A neurosurgeon knicked the circle of Willis when removing the catheter after coiling the brain aneurysm.

 

[tvguy]

I can't speak to errors, but my mom was a Surgical RN and she always felt people ignored the fact that there is a known percentage of risk of death with every procedure, and with every medicine for that matter.
People just want the surgery or the pill for cure what is ailing them.

 

[wgeo]

Trying to stay slightly vague on purpose - but the Dr that signed the release form for my first born and I to leave the hospital missed something, and a nurse pointedly asked him about it and he still released us. 2 days later we rushed son back to the hospital, where they debated airlifting him to a specialized unit in another state. After a week in the NICU he was fine - so we're all good. The clinic that we went to walked on pins and needles around us for awhile, and it took me some time to realize they were waiting to see if we would sue. We didn't, because it was a judgement call issue and in the end everything was fine. Dr.s are human, they can't be perfect every time.

 

[belleatdisney]

I believe it.

 

[tazdev3225]

My husband had reconstructive surgery on his foot last year. Surgery went well and he was expected home in a day or 2. He was a stroke and fall risk. Imagine my shock to find out that my husband suffered a major stroke in the hospital, a major stroke center with signs everywhere on how to recognize the signs of a stroke, and they only discovered it when they found him on the floor after he fell out of the bed. Add insult to injury the orthopedist came in the day before my husband went to rehab and told him to get out of bed and start using the crutches. I thought my youngest daughter, who is a nurse, was going to kill him. She did curse him out.

Husband had a second stroke 2 days after he came home from rehab because the hospital never did tests to find out what caused the first stroke and also took him off blood thinners since he was mobile. # weeks later and he was barely mobile as she had extensive left side weakness.

Thankfully my husband survived but we will have to deal with the after effects of the strokes for the rest of his life. He has limited vision now and permanent numbness and tingling.

 

[Domo]

I got screwed over in an operation once. Long story short, ended up with acute PTSD that took ages to fix.

 

[low-key]

I would also like to point out that a high number of these errors are only cause its hard to hide in the States, many places can easily hide mistakes

 

[MrsCobraBubbles]

The first thing I learned when I worked at a hospital was CYA. That was literally the first thing the girl who was training me said, after hello. Medical mistakes happen more often than people realize, most of them have no major consequences and go unnoticed.

My great-grandmother was killed by a hospital mistake many years ago. It's not a death but my ex-husband's broken back went undiagnosed for a long time. He ended up needing a much more serious and invasive surgery to correct it because the broken vertebrae destroyed the discs over time.

 

[ols386]

On a personal level, I can believe it.

In January 2017 my mother had an endovascular procedure done to clip a small brain aneurysm. The coiling itself was, and still is, fine but just about 2 1/2 hours post-op, my mom went unresponsive. She did not respond to verbal or tactile stimuli and a stat CT was ordered. That revealed a large intraparenchymal hemorrhage and she had blood pooled in the entire left hemisphere of her brain. She then underwent an emergency decompressive craniectomy and was placed in a medically induced coma, on a ventilator in ICU for 15 days. Her left skull was placed in frozen storage and replaced almost 6 months to the day later. She's paralyzed on her right side, suffers from expressive aphasia with a vocabulary of approximately ten words as well as long and short-term memory loss and is incontinent of both bowel and bladder.

When all of this happened, a team of neurosurgeons told us her chance of surviving and waking up when they stopped her propofol was < 5%. They said she'd never pass a breathing trial and would require life-long intervention. We were prepared to make the end of life decision, but mom apparently had other plans.

The cause of the bleed? A neurosurgeon knicked the circle of Willis when removing the catheter after coiling the brain aneurysm.

Gosh I’m really sorry that happened to your mother.

 

[Cubbiecakes]

Exacerbating factors: chronic overwork and understaffing.

Healthcare is being treated like a business and administrators don't care how it affects care, they just keep beating the staff down.

 

[manning]

I'm diabetic. Several years back I was scheduled for a morning operation. Late afternoon It was rescheduled for the next day. All that time I was in the prep room or whatever you call it. The next before putting me under the surgeon is apologizing all over the place. Found out later that my doctor called at the end of the first day to check on me. Found out later that when he found out what had happened and he wasn't notified he went livid. He was immediately on the phone chewing a bunch of butts.

 

[bbak30]

Honestly, I think patients contribute in their own way. Many patients have NO idea of their medical history, surgical history or know why they are taking medications. They don't tell the medical staff everything. Probably not on purpose....but still.
Case in point, I had a patient the other day who had a list of her medications. It was old, faded. I asked numerous times if this was everything and she swore it was. She has a UTI and we put her on Cipro. Well, Cipro shouldn't be taken with anti arrhythmic drugs. And guess what...she was taking an anti arrhythmic medication. Of
Course she didn't do that on purpose, but it's a big thing to not disclose. She goes to fill it and we get a call from the pharmacy because they noticed the contradiction. We changed the antibiotic. The patient had no clue. None. Neither did her family. Even after asking several times.
Would that have counted as a medical error if something would have happened to her by taking that Cipro? ‍‍

 

[Vicki926]

My husband had a brain bleed last September, he had a n aneurysm which caused a hemorrhagic stroke..was in neuro icu for 4 weeks, acute rehab for 6 weeks, subacute rehab for 3 weeks. Had right side paralysis, expressive aphasia, and while he was improving very slowly, he seemed in a fog, slept constantly, which we know can be normal so we thought it was just symptoms from the stroke. He had a seizure immediately after the brain bleed (didn’t present physically, showed up on an eeg), and was put in medication to forestall any seizures in the future.
He left subacute rehab and went to his regular doctor. Did blood work, went home.
His doctor called me at 7am the next morning and told me to not give him his morning dose of Dilantin, he had toxic levels of it in his blood, and needed to wean off of it immediately.

He stopped the Dilantin and within a couple of days the fog lifted, he was clear eyed, no more napping during the day nor going to sleep at 6pm. Was able to work harder in therapy.

When I was talking to his neurosurgeons office about the meds he was on, in preparation for getting the piece of his skull they had removed, replaced, i mentioned that he was no longer taking Dilantin, and she said oh we didn’t have him on that, he wasn’t taking that when he left the hospital.

So some idiot doctor in one of the rehabs put him on an anti seizure med he didn’t need(he has not had any seizure activity, and was on Keppra, an anti seizure med), and was overdosing him..which kept him from participating fully in his rehab and recovery.

ETA: getting his piece of skull replaced caused a HUGE improvement, immediately regained movement in his right leg, partial movement in his right arm and his speech started to improve as well, still a ways to go, but he’s getting there. Weaning off the Keppra now, as well.
So I don’t think it did any long term damage, but it’s still infuriating.

 

[a1tinkfans]

A frightening thread...
There’s another here on the DIS with a story that could be on this thread... a dr oversight on a TB diagnosis..
Scary indeed

 

[dotfurio]

I've seen it. People really need to advocate for themselves and have a clear understanding of their condition and treatment, and have someone they trust to advocate for them when they can't advocate for themselves. I don't know if the doctors and nurses I've seen issues with are overworked or inept. Just a few things I've seen are a wrong diagnosis when a doctor didn't read the 2nd page of a radiology report, treatment miscommunication between hospital shift change, and a doctor who issued a DNR order based on my MIL delirious "verbal request". DH almost died when a doctor told him his blood test was fine when in fact he was so anemic from a bleeding ulcer he ended up in the hospital the next day and had to get several units of blood. I could think of half a dozen more incidents I or family or friends have experienced, but these are the worst of them off the top of my head.

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

For some reason, I can't post the link. But CNBC has an article from Frebruary of this year claiming that medical errors is the third leading cause of death in the Untited States.

That statistic is staggering! Have you or someone you know experienced death from medical error? What about injury or illness due to error?

Please don't share anything that should be confidential. But with the numbers that are being reported, there's bound to be experience with this on the Disboards.

Do you have any thoughts as to why the numbers are so high?

That figure is an estimate by researchers at Johns Hopkins, rather than numbers from hard data.