Preventing Medical Mishaps
Sick people and their concerned families turn for rescue to the world of medicine, the safest and most merciful of all human endeavors, so it would seem. But exposure to the system too often comes with another reality-the medical arena is no different from other human endeavors and in some ways can be worse, the astonished and grieving relatives left in a state of shocked disbelief, as happened to a lovely middle-aged lady, a devoted and concerned wife, “Betsy Simmons”. Thanks to a medical “mistake”, new, new medicine
, medicine
, her husband, “Mr. Simmons” wiggled restlessly in the night, loosening his subclavian line out of its socket, and bled quietly to death in the night. He had lost consciousness and never called for help. He died at the most dangerous time of the day, when the night ends, nurses change shifts. In this daily 7am ceremony, nurses who have been on duty all night turn over the patients to the crew arriving in the middle of heavy hallway traffic. The scene is edgy with an air of confusion. “John Simmons” died because no one had been watching him. The incident caused no public reaction and elicited no response from law enforcement officers or from professional-conduct monitors. The news reached the local papers only as an obituary and drew no national attention. The victim, prominent neither politically or otherwise, left no relatives except his stunned wife, who reacted only with defeat and caused no disturbance by attacking the doctor or suing the hospital.
Then the happening of this preventable death became an anticlimax in the silence of history because such quirks of fate are so unexpected.
The infrequent news media reports of medical mishaps such as this one usually are ignored because the events seem so remote of everyday reality. But in the past decade increasing evidence has stimulated concern and provoked statistical evaluations and other investigations into the world of modern medicine. As a consequence several recent studies claim altogether the astounding sum of 100,000 to 300,000 preventable deaths a year in the medical system of the United States. Reaction from the public and from patients and doctors alike to this disturbing news, as would be expected, has been disbelief. Surely these figures can’t be right! And who says so, anyway? Hospitals are the safest of shelters and doctors and nurses the most competent of keepers. Right?
Besides, there is no other place to turn when illness strikes with the threat of death, a time when patients and their families want someone with knowledge and the ability to take over and get them out of trouble, someone to trust completely. In this mood people tend to surrender to the system; it’s too complicated anyway for outsiders.
So, a closer look to see who is talking reveals facts even more sobering; the tabulations have been coming not from activists, sensation seekers, advocates of other therapies, or self- assured crazies, but from reliable and important sources such as the Institute of Medicine and the New England Journal of Medicine among others, and the reports continue. Now, on this foundation the news has a somber tone and a significance, indeed, of the utmost seriousness, the problem much bigger than anyone suggested.
In the modern medical system as it continues to develop, the possibility of mishaps continues to increase, especially in the areas where financial strictures are applied for the sake of profit. Patients caught up in these circumstances can no longer complacently regard the medical scene with the attitude “It can’t happen here, new medicine
, .” It does happen here, and patients and their, new medicine
, families must learn to recognize the dangers and how to avoid them.
Learn more about these situations and become aware in order to protect yourself and your loved ones. Read the full story of “Mr. and Mrs. Simmons” in “Life in the Deadly World of Medicine” written by Dr. Joseph T. McFadden MD, FACS.