S/O Medical errors

[sasywtch]

My 40 year old daughter last year. She was taken by ambulance as she had lost feeling in her legs and had chest pain. The triage nurse sent her to the regular waiting room and wanted her wheelchair back. 4 hours later when she got called in (in line with the sore throat people), she had a ripped aorta and stroke of the spine. She had so much blood loss over the hours, she is now paralyzed from the breast down.

 

[Soldier's*Sweeties]

My aunt's first husband had a heart attack. The hospital verified that it was a heart attack and sent him home under 24 hours later (first no-no). That night he suffered another one and my aunt called 911. The emergency service sent a transport vehicle with little to no medical equipment and they switched him over to an ambulance in the parking lot of a 7-11. He died on the way.

So much went wrong that day. She sued multiple agencies, and won.

 

[elphaba91]

While I obviously can’t disclose too much, we have a client at work who will likely be suing a hospital after a botched cataract surgery left her partially blind. We had another client who wanted to sue his doctor or a drug manufacturer after his prostate medication shrank a certain organ, but for various reasons we convinced him not to pursue it. He was in his 80s, in a nursing home, severely overweight and barely able to walk so really wasn’t using said organ much anyway!

My sister died when she was 14 from an undiagnosed heart condition. She had passed out on a few occasions and had been referred to a neurologist. My mum asked whether it could be her heart and he did an ECG - lying down without even taking her shirt off - and said it was fine. After she died we saw a cardiologist who said that the results were borderline for a healthy person and that for someone with her medical history further tests should definitely have been ordered. Because she was a child (and didn’t earn an income) it wouldn’t have been worth the pain and expense of issuing a claim.

 

[fauna74]

Oh, yes- if you spend any time in hospitals you will see mistakes. Humans make human errors. (But that also includes patients who don't give complete/accurate history, don't check medications...)
My brother was given medication to RAISE blood pressure instead of medication to LOWER it. Luckily the Dr. was on the floor and quickly figured out what had happened and was able to mitigate it before my brother had a stroke or cardiac arrest. AS A PATIENT, ALWAYS KNOW WHAT MEDICATIONS YOU ARE ON AND WHEN MEDICATION IS DISPENSED TO YOU MAKE THE NURSE TELL YOU WHAT IT IS.
Same brother was given too much anesthesia during a minor procedure (that became complicated). He pretty much died, but was shocked back.
Same brother was very ill. Dr. told him to drink Gatorade. Turned out he was in kidney failure and all that Gatorade almost killed him.
I could go on and on....

 

[lsyorke]

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.

Key point here. Medicine isn't an exact science and never will be. I'm shocked at some of the unrealistic beliefs people have about medical situations. Every surgery has the risk of death, from heart surgery to foot surgery. Doesn't mean that something was always done in a neglectful manner.

 

[tvguy]

Key point here. Medicine isn't an exact science and never will be. I'm shocked at some of the unrealistic beliefs people have about medical situations. Every surgery has the risk of death, from heart surgery to foot surgery. Doesn't mean that something was always done in a neglectful manner.

And the most surprising to thing to me in caring for my mom in the last year of her life was that a treatment that would be used without hesitation in a 40 year old, may have a greater risk for a 90 year old than the ailment they are treating.

 

[jaybirdsmommy]

Key point here. Medicine isn't an exact science and never will be. I'm shocked at some of the unrealistic beliefs people have about medical situations. Every surgery has the risk of death, from heart surgery to foot surgery. Doesn't mean that something was always done in a neglectful manner.

Yes, things happen. Sometimes the doctor messes up, sometimes the patient lies or omits things or doesn't follow orders, and sometimes the statistics just work against you.

and sometimes doctors have agendas. we have a local pediatrician here that a lot of parents refuse to see due to his views on how to treat illness. He is a proponent of the less intervention the better - ie no antibiotics for ear infections, no pain meds, no strep tests, getting him to do anything is like pulling teeth. I've gotten into the habit of calling the pediatricians office before we go to the emergency after hours clinic just to make sure he isn't the doctor on duty. If he is, we go to the er or the urgent care instead.

Unfortunately, when my son had pneumonia he was the emergency call doctor at the clinic that day and my husband didn't have enough experience with the ped's office to know to avoid him so he ended up in charge of my son's treatment in the hospital. My son was hospitalized for 3 days with no visible improvement even though this dr was telling us that everything was fine,he'd probably be discharging him the next day, he was just overreacting when he said he was in pain (this kid has an obscenely high pain tolerance, if he says something hurts we listen), etc.

On the third morning he was sent for his normal morning xray. Usually the technician came and got him, did the xray, then took him back to his room immediately after. This morning, the technician told us to wait because the doctor needed to see the results NOW and he didn't want even the 10 minute delay of taking us back to the room.

5 minutes after we got back to the room the dr came sauntering in and said he thought he'd send us over to the big Childrens Hospital 2 hours away because he wanted them to take a look and make sure things were improving like he said. No big deal, they'd probably look at him and send him home. So we transfer by ambulance to the new hospital.

At the new hospital, we are met at the door by an intern who basically says the same thing--Dr. x wants us to take a look and make sure we don't see anything, we'll probably just send him on home...etc. I don't know what he told her. She listened to his lungs, listened again, and again...then turns white and says "I'm going to get my supervising doctor, this is beyond what I can handle and I'm not comfortable with it." The supervising dr listens, orders an x-ray, and within 30 minutes he is in ICU. What the x-ray technician had seen was that one lung was completely full of fluid (no breath sounds at all on that side) and the other was starting to fill as well. When they tried to lay him flat on the bed for the xray he literally turned blue.

Did the original doctor make a mistake? I don't know - I'm more inclined to think that he was trying his usual tactic of the less treatment the better and when it became obvious that it wasn't going to work (I think the radiologist called him out on it) he passed it off to someone else instead of changing the way he normally did things. Either way, he lied. Based on what the other doctors told us and their obvious surprise at the condition my son was in when we got there, he lied to them as well.

 

[prprincess]

I am not surprised.

I dodged a bullet myself back in 2010 when I had my thyroidectomy. While I was in recovery waiting for a room, my nurse came over and told me it was time to take my medication. I honestly had never heard of whatever it was he wanted me to take, and it wasn't anything that I was already on, so I asked him what it was for. He said, oh your anxiety and depression. I told him that I'm not on anything. He goes back, checks his charts, and lo and behold, it belonged to another woman on the floor who had the same first name as me!! He came back, explained, and apologized. My name is pretty unique and rare, so he said he just assumed it was me. Thank goodness I was awake enough to think clearly, question him, and turn it down. Who knows how I would have reacted to whatever it was!!

 

[lsyorke]

Did the original doctor make a mistake? I don't know - I'm more inclined to think that he was trying his usual tactic of the less treatment the better and when it became obvious that it wasn't going to work (I think the radiologist called him out on it) he passed it off to someone else instead of changing the way he normally did things. Either way, he lied. Based on what the other doctors told us and their obvious surprise at the condition my son was in when we got there, he lied to them as well.

Nope, this case is complete negligence. That doctor should be reported to the Medical Board.

 

[tazdev3225]

Key point here. Medicine isn't an exact science and never will be. I'm shocked at some of the unrealistic beliefs people have about medical situations. Every surgery has the risk of death, from heart surgery to foot surgery. Doesn't mean that something was always done in a neglectful manner.

I can only speak to my husband's situation and I know that surgeries have risks having had a few in my life. However during the pre-op appointment I gave them a complete list of every medication my husband was on. They knew that the surgery had been postponed because he presented with dangerously high blood pressure at the original surgery because someone told him NOT to take his BP meds. The day after my husbands surgery he was on pain meds but extremely agitated, his BP was very high and he complained of a severe headache. After being there with him for 5 hours and asking questions the nurse came in and asked me what meds he took for his "migraines". That med was with the complete list I gave at pre-op. I realize now that my husband was in all likelihood having the stroke as I sat there watching helpless and with no knowledge of the symptoms being a stroke risk. No neuro assessments were done at all and the medications I know they were presented with lacked the complete list. He was a fall risk and yet his bed wasn't alarmed. He was found on the floor with a bad cut on his face that was not properly treated. He was transported to rehab as quickly as possible, running a fever and not medically stable. The hospital screwed up and they knew it.

 

[disneyeveryyear]

My DM76 had been pre-diagnosed with liver cancer in late February, 2016. She was scheduled for a biopsy the following week.

On Monday morning my mom calls me at 6:15 that she isn't feeling well and asks me to come to her house. When she tells me she is very weak and can't walk well, and is light headed, I call the Dr's office who insists she go to the hospital (what I wanted her to do).

Off we go to the ER. She is admitted into ICU through the ER because ER doc thinks she is septic from a UTI. Luckily she wasn't septic and only spent one night in ICU before being transferred to oncology floor because her BP is extremely low. The hospital is told numerous times that she has suspected liver cancer and has 3rd stage kidney disease. While in the ICU they put a pic line in so they can give her meds if needed for the low BP, but they will first try fluids.

15 days later she dies in the hospital (after the biopsy confirmed liver cancer). However, she died from kidney failure (she chose no dialysis) due to the over flooding of her system from all of the IV fluids that were pushed (they never gave her IV meds for the BP). She weighed 40 lbs more when she died than when she went into the hospital 15 days before. I didn't connect the fact that she needed different socks due to swelling in her legs. She had a history of swollen calves and ankles, so I just assumed it was that.

We did not sue because the oncologist told us her life expectancy was 3-6 months, with a possible 4 month extension if the oral chemo had any effect (only 40% effective). So, we weren't going to get any large settlement, even if we did sue. I work for PI attorney, and know that it wasn't worth the trouble.

However, in my heart I know that the hospital killed my mother. I hate the hospitalist system and wish she had been seen by her PCP and Nephrologist. I think I could have had some more time with my mom if it had been caught in time. I do know she died peacefully as kidney failure is a painless way to die, as explained by the nephrologist, and that was better than the slow painful death from liver cancer, but I still miss my mom so much it hurts.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I am not surprised.

I dodged a bullet myself back in 2010 when I had my thyroidectomy. While I was in recovery waiting for a room, my nurse came over and told me it was time to take my medication. I honestly had never heard of whatever it was he wanted me to take, and it wasn't anything that I was already on, so I asked him what it was for. He said, oh your anxiety and depression. I told him that I'm not on anything. He goes back, checks his charts, and lo and behold, it belonged to another woman on the floor who had the same first name as me!! He came back, explained, and apologized. My name is pretty unique and rare, so he said he just assumed it was me. Thank goodness I was awake enough to think clearly, question him, and turn it down. Who knows how I would have reacted to whatever it was!!

If used correctly, electronic medication administration systems catch a lot these, because the patient's ID band is scanned first, and then the medication. If it's not the correct patient and correct medication ordered (including dosage), then it won't allow you to proceed further.

Oh, yes- if you spend any time in hospitals you will see mistakes. Humans make human errors. (But that also includes patients who don't give complete/accurate history, don't check medications...)
My brother was given medication to RAISE blood pressure instead of medication to LOWER it. Luckily the Dr. was on the floor and quickly figured out what had happened and was able to mitigate it before my brother had a stroke or cardiac arrest. AS A PATIENT, ALWAYS KNOW WHAT MEDICATIONS YOU ARE ON AND WHEN MEDICATION IS DISPENSED TO YOU MAKE THE NURSE TELL YOU WHAT IT IS.
Same brother was given too much anesthesia during a minor procedure (that became complicated). He pretty much died, but was shocked back.
Same brother was very ill. Dr. told him to drink Gatorade. Turned out he was in kidney failure and all that Gatorade almost killed him.
I could go on and on....

This one is interesting, because a doctor has to order any medication before it's given to a patient. It sounds like it's possible the doctor ordered the wrong medication. Another possibility is that the nurse administered the wrong medication. But again, it's hard to make this mistake today if all procedures are followed with electronic medication systems. The patient's wristband must be scanned first, and then the medication itself. If it doesn't match up, you can't proceed. You can override the system, but in most cases, it calls the caregiver's attention to the problem, and the caregiver will react to fix the problem. Hospitals who don't use these electronic systems, or caregivers that bypass the systems or other policies and procedures put in place for safety, will allow for errors, still, but things are getting a lot better than they used to be when there were simply big rooms with a bunch of medications in them and you just grabbed what you needed. Now you also have to plug in certain information into locked systems in order to get medications out. It's not foolproof, but the system won't allow you to take out the wrong medication most of the time.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

OK, now, would just like to call attention to the fact that caregivers, too, are patients themselves, as are their families, and we run into problems, too!

One recent one that comes quickly to mind:

My mother fell and wound up in the Emergeny Dept - which was crazy busy, as usual. She was connected to a heart monitor and placed in a room. Sitting there and looking at her heart rhythm, I noticed she was having intermittent periods of a significant conduction disturbance, i.e. she was in and out of a second degree heart block, type II, and nobody else there had noticed it! When I caught her nurse and tried to call her attention to it, she seemed annoyed. Eventually a doctor came in. Long story short, she bought herself a pacemaker that admission. My hope is that if I wasn't there, someone else would've noticed it, but idk. She was mainly there for a head injury. (ETA and she likely fell because of this rhythm disturbance.)

 

[blana]

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

From what I can tell from "the Google", it also appears to be a study from 2016 that the writers of the article are trying to set forth as being new information.

 

[fauna74]

If used correctly, electronic medication administration systems catch a lot these, because the patient's ID band is scanned first, and then the medication. If it's not the correct patient and correct medication ordered (including dosage), then it won't allow you to proceed further.


This one is interesting, because a doctor has to order any medication before it's given to a patient. It sounds like it's possible the doctor ordered the wrong medication. Another possibility is that the nurse administered the wrong medication. But again, it's hard to make this mistake today if all procedures are followed with electronic medication systems. The patient's wristband must be scanned first, and then the medication itself. If it doesn't match up, you can't proceed. You can override the system, but in most cases, it calls the caregiver's attention to the problem, and the caregiver will react to fix the problem. Hospitals who don't use these electronic systems, or caregivers that bypass the systems or other policies and procedures put in place for safety, will allow for errors, still, but things are getting a lot better than they used to be when there were simply big rooms with a bunch of medications in them and you just grabbed what you needed. Now you also have to plug in certain information into locked systems in order to get medications out. It's not foolproof, but the system won't allow you to take out the wrong medication most of the time.

The medication mix up was nurse error- yes, this was many years ago. Yes, procedures are better now. Humans will still make errors. My mom was in the hospital last year and even though they had a very up to date list of her meds, one was missing for a day until we got it straightened out. Fortunately, my mom is a very on her toes 88 year old with (unfortunately) a lot of experience advocating for loved ones in medical situations.

 

[prprincess]

If used correctly, electronic medication administration systems catch a lot these, because the patient's ID band is scanned first, and then the medication. If it's not the correct patient and correct medication ordered (including dosage), then it won't allow you to proceed further.

I don't recall him scanning my band, but he may have...I was still in and out of things. Again, just glad that I ALWAYS question things and, being that I have several chronic conditions, that I am a strong advocate for my own health.

 

[jalapeno_pretzel]

Mine is minor compared to some of these ... went to PCP office asking for strep throat test - I had sudden onset, severe sore throat, and bad headache. I was missing the fever though. I've had strep before and really thought this was strep. Doctor took a look, asked if my kids were sick, and said nope, it's not strep, and you can't get strep if your kids aren't sick (never mind that the last time I had strep, the kids were also not sick - and also why was a test developed if someone can tell from just looking?). Instead he wanted to focus on my borderline blood pressure (which I was already under the care of a cardiologist for since his office had neglected to notice it creeping up over the past year). Sent me away with the instructions to have some hot tea. The next day I went to an urgent care, asked for a strep test, which they did without even asking anything, and it came back positive. One of my kids caught it a few days later - I'll never know if I had started treatment 24 hours earlier they could have avoided it. The PCP office attempted to charge me $148 for my visit, which they waived after I complained - though they were clear to not admit any wrongdoing. Got a new PCP after that - this was just the last straw of several. I'm not sure how some people are able to get through medical school.

 

[VandVsmama]

Oh I have a few doozies.

Messed Up Medical Tale #1:
ODD was a toddler, got the stomach flu from another child at daycare. It happens. Did the normal routine of fluids & all that. If still vomiting 24 hr later, call the pediatrician, which I did. 36 hr later, she was still throwing up only now it was pretty much nonstop and she was so lethargic that she wouldn't even lift up her head to vomit. She was in really bad shape. My mommy radar said take the kid to the ER RIGHT NOW! So I did. Went to the nearest hospital, which I learned later was NOT equipped to deal with children. We waited 5 hr to be seen by a triage nurse all the while she's getting worse and worse. The other people in the waiting room were going up to the check in desk telling them to check on my child. finally around midnight we're seen and the doctor said, "She's in really bad shape, how come you didn't come in sooner?" Um, we've now been here for 6 hr and I've been inquiring at your desk every 20-30 min.

Her blood sugar was a few points away from having a seizure because it was so low. She got transferred to the children's hospital. Oh and they put an adult sized IV in my 1 yr old's arm. It took 4 adults to hold her down so they could put it in. It was awful. Once we got to the children's hospital, it was like night and day. The care was so much better. I will never take my kids to that first hospital ever ever again.

Messed Up Medical Tale #2:
A few years ago, I woke up on a Saturday morning feeling kind of 'off.' No fever, just a slight cough which I chocked up to allergies or something. By noon, I felt horrible and had a fever. I knew something was wrong. Went to urgent care, they did a chest xray and what do you know? The beginnings of pneumonia in the lower lobe of my right lung. I was sent home with a prescription for antibiotics which I started taking right away and I took religiously all weekend.

Fast forward to Monday early afternoon, and I'm not better. My fever is worse. A lot worse. And my cough is REALLY bad. It's now bad enough that I can only take a few steps without having to stop and rest and when I'm sitting down, my heart is racing. Fever was 104.5 at that point. I called DH. He arranged w/MIL to pick up the kids from daycare and have them taken to MIL's house for the night and then he came home to take me to the ER.

Once at the ER, I was bad enough that I couldn't walk in on my own. Had to use a wheelchair. I got put to the front of the line because they thought I was septic. Chest x-ray confirmed that both lungs were almost completely full of fluid. I spent 5 days in the hospital with 3 different antibiotics on IV drip. And then 3 weeks at home afterwards on supplemental oxygen. As it turns out, the urgent care doctor prescribed the wrong antibiotic. The one I'd been given does absolutely nothing for pneumonia. I was in such rough shape that my blood O2 levels were something like 85%. 2 points lower and they would have sedated me and intubated me and put me in the ICU.

Messed Up Medical Tale #3:
This one was my sister's friend's mom in northern CA. The mom had Kaiser Permanente health insurance (they suck). She had a heart attack in the shower one morning getting ready for work. Ambulance to the Kaiser ER. She gets there and they assess her and realize that she's too sick for them to handle her there, she needs the trauma center at the county general hospital because her aorta has split open. She needs a medivac helicopter, but they couldn't get the ambulances to move so a helicopter could land in the parking lot. So she had to go via ambulance to Stanford medical center...45 min away. Her husband and daughter said their goodbyes thinking that she would die en route. While still at the Kaiser ER, one of the nurses in charge of taking care of her said to her daughter something so dismissive. "Oh! This is too stressful for me. I need to go get a cup of coffee." Um...hello?! You're an ER nurse! When Kaiser called Stanford, the Stanford team immediately went into "LET'S GO!" mode and they called in all of their top specialists who were experts in handling this sort of problem. Brought in their best trauma surgeons, trauma nurses, etc. Everybody was there and ready to rock and roll once the ambulance arrived. She was wheeled straight to the OR. Her husband and daughter said that it was like night and day in the quality of care that she received there. She lived and is still alive today, but only because of the medical team at Stanford medical center. The Kaiser buttholes almost killed her.

Messed Up Medical Tale #4:
My grandmother had a stroke in her spinal cord. She, too, was on Kaiser Permanente insurance in northern CA at the time and (this was years prior to tale #3) went to the same ER as the lady in tale #3 went to. My grandmother had all of the classic stroke symptoms except she didn't have any loss of speech and her face wasn't drooping. The ER doctor was dismissive of her and sent her across the street to the Kaiser urgent care. Hours later, the Kaiser urgent care doctor looked at her and told her to go home and take 2 Tylenol or ibuprofen and to come back in the morning if it wasn't better. Well, the following morning, she couldn't walk. At all. So they went to the ER and low and behold, they totally missed the stroke. She was in the hospital for a week and in a nursing home for 2 weeks after that and she never really walked again after that ordeal.

I never ever will use Kaiser insurance. EVER! Horrible medical care. It's fine if nothing ever is wrong with you. But it's like the Walmart of health insurance. It's awful.

 

[Jennasis]

I went into the hospital for spine surgery. The nurse was having a difficult time getting my IV line set up...after not drinking anything after midnight, my veins weren't easy to stick. She dug around for ages before sighing about how it wasn't a greta job she had done and that the anesthesiologist would likely want to reposition the line later. Then she opened up the line for the bag of saline and walked away. Well her crappy job reared it's ugle head as her terribly placed line started running saline full bore into my shrunken veins. Within seconds my whole arm swelled and the pain was unimaginable! DH flagged the nurse down and she only sighed something about having to slow down the drip. Took a good while for the immense pain and swelling to subside. When they wheeled me into the OR, the anesthesiologist ran heparin into the line to clear it before running a calming drub. Well that burned my whole hand! I yelped that it burned and the anesthesiologist said "What? t shouldn't burn..." then she looked at the placement of the IV and lost her mind! She was SO mad at how poorly placed it was. She apologized profusely and was very angry that the nurse never mentioned that the line needed to be fixed. Then it was 10 minutes of her trying to get a new line in my other hand (with the possibility of needing a central line being discussed). Luckily she got it placed but it would've been very ugly had they run the surgical drugs in that crap line.


There was also the time DH had what he thought was a pimple on his leg. Long story story it was the start of a terrible infection that spread quickly and he was septic. But when I rushed him to the ER, they gave him a script for vicodin and penicillin (he's allergic and said so) and told him to go see his doctor on Monday (it was Friday morning). Meanwhile his temp was through the roof. His leg was hot and swollen and he was exhibiting flu-like symptoms of chills and body aches. When we got home I didn't feeel right about the ER trip so I called his doctor's office and asked for the nurse and explained to her what happened. She demanded I bring him in immediately. The doctor he saw ran bloodwork and found his white count off the charts and sent him right then for emergency surgery to drain and clean the infected area. Saved his life.

 

[neverlandsky]

Educated guesses and the use of the word stable/you're normal. If you're stable or deemed normal you're not a risk. I fought for DH, he had a blocked bile duct. Fought for me, I was hemorrhaging internally with retained placenta 6 weeks pp.