Quote:
Originally Posted by SoonerCoug
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.
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Good analysis (and examples).
Although, I have to say, the insulin thing is sort of surprising for a few reasons. I've had patients take megadoses of insulin (up to 100x their dose); death from this would be unusual.
Which goes to my original point on this study--it's actually fairly hard to kill a patient in the present system. Sure, I see mistakes made all of the time--but most of them are either: 1) very minor (with no real consequences), 2) caught at some point in the process (pharmacy errors), 3) consequences fixed before permanent damage is done, or 4) done in the heat of the moment (where the patient's dying anyway, and it's VERY questionable whether the mistake caused the death). No way that 100,000 people are killed each year by medical mistakes.