What is wrong with Ohio hospital care? Why do we hear about never-ending medical errors and mistakes being made in Ohio Hospitals? Every day we hear about or experience needless and countless numbers of tragic deaths and serious and catastrophic injuries in Ohio Hospitals due to system failures and communication breakdowns. Before I venture any [...]
There are certain things that should never happen when you have surgery. One is that surgical equipment such as sponges, needles and other equipment used during the surgery should never be left behind. If the surgical team is working together and doing their job, all equipment used should be accounted for at the end of the surgery. [...]
Hospital errors that lead to serious preventable medical injuries occur at alarming rates. Communication between various caregivers is frequently the cause of these preventable medical errors. I have previously written about a case I tried where the patient's injury was entirely preventable if the handoff from one doctor to the next had been improved. See [...]
In evaluating hospital negligence cases, it is important to understand the role of nurses and the challenges that they face. In modern healthcare, profiteering hospitals are engaged in an all out assault on the nursing profession, through such practices as short-staffing, hiring underskilled personnel to replace nurses and using dangerously inaccurate electronic information systems. The [...]
Surgical errors arising out bariatric surgery can occur before, during or after the procedure. Medical negligence may occur before surgery based on the poor patient selection. Patients who undergo bariatric surgery must be carefully screened to assess their physical and mental fitness to undergo major surgery that results in dramatic lifestyle alteration. As important as [...]
Surgical errors may result from the decision to perform unnecessary surgery. A recent study performed by the Mayo Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery reports that thyroidectomy -- surgical removal of the thyroid gland -- is often performed unnecessarily. According to the Mayo Center, surgical removal of the thyroid has more than tripled in the [...]
The root cause of most cases of nursing negligence is, in reality, hospital negligence in failing to properly staff its units with an adequate number of experienced registered nurses. A new culprit is the electronic medical record, which is prone to medication errors and creating fields of useless, unreliable and inaccurate data in a patient's hospital chart. Following is a [...]
Hospital negligence refers to medical malpractice claims that arise out of substandard medical care provided by hospital employees, including nurses and residents. Residents, or physicians-in-training, play a key role on care of hospitalized patients. However, overworked, fatigued and inexperienced residents can be dangerous to a hospitalized patient's health. Residents are doctors-in-training who have graduated medical school but need [...]
Surgical errors using laser technology are on the rise, according to an article appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association - Dermatology (JAMA-Dermatology). The article notes that the number of medical malpractice claims arising out of use of lasers for dermatological procedures has skyrocketed in recent years, due to expansive use of this technology, [...]
Surgical errors are often preventable. Clearly, wrong side surgeries are preventable. In 2002, the National Quality Forum published a list of 28 Serious Reportable Events (SREs) "to increase public accountability and consumer access to critical information about healthcare performance." The list includes a number of common preventable surgical errors, including wrong site surgery (e.g., an operation performed [...]