Quote:
Originally Posted by FMCoug
The number I have heard is 10,000. Maybe he got confused. But maybe one of our board docs can set us straight.
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It depends on the definition of medical mistake.
Unfortunately, most people expect docs to be perfect, which is silly.
I've seen examples of people who are dying of cancer to undergo a procedure where a mistake is made that causes death to occur earlier than it otherwise would. So there is a medical mistake that caused death in a person who was going to die soon anyway.
I also know of an example in Utah where a student had appendicitis and the anesthesiologist accidentally injected him with insulin instead of an anesthetic because the bottles looked identical. (The previous patient had been a diabetic so they had insulin on the table to help control that patient's blood sugar.) The insulin killed the poor kid.
Or you can have a psych patient who cheeks his pills in the psych ward and then ODs on them days later, and then the patient's family sues the doctor for giving him the pills even though they were needed.
So it's a question of where you draw the line. Some things are obvious medical mistakes (like the insulin thing), whereas the psych patient who cheeks his pills and ODs is probably not a mistake, but some might classify it as such.