Repost Message #8924: Medical Horror Show

[Guest guest]

Gettingwell , Frank <califpacific> wrote:

> http://cbc.ca//news/viewpoint/columns_omalley/martin991201.html

Medical Horror Shows

> Medical Horror Shows

> Martin O'Malley

> CBC News Online

>

> In our science and technology section we recently carried a story

titled, " Medical mistakes killing thousands. " It dealt with a survey

conducted by the Institute of Medicine in the United States, part of

the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. The survey estimated

that medical mistakes kill between 44,000 and 100,000 people a year.

>

> Even using the lower figure, this means more people are killed by

medical mistakes every year in the United States than by highway

accidents, breast cancer or AIDS. I expect the situation to be

similar, proportionately, in Canada. Hospitals are dangerous places

where many things can and often do go terribly wrong. There is a word

for it: iatrogenic. It is the word used to describe medical

calamities " induced inadvertently by a physician or surgeon or by

medical treatment or diagnostic procedures. "

>

> With health cutbacks and short-staffed hospitals, people who must

go to hospital are advised these days to bring with them a " patient

advocate, " a friend or relative who will run interference for them,

and perhaps save their lives.

>

> A while ago I spent two years in a hospital researching a book on

medical care. It would not be fair to single out the hospital because

my research took place 15 years ago. Besides, iatrogenic calamities

happen in all hospitals, big or small, in every city in the country.

This story came to me in the public relations department, where a

woman wrote to the director to tell the story of what happened to her

mother.

>

> Her mother was 72 years old. On a brisk, wintry day before

Christmas she went shopping and fainted in a downtown department

store. She was taken to hospital where, following a Kafkaesque series

of blunders, she died. Three months later, the daughter wrote to the

hospital's public relations department trying to find an explanation.

>

> " No one seems to know anything, " she said in her letter. " I am not

interested in starting a lawsuit against the hospital to gain some

satisfaction and peace of mind. All I want to do is speak with those

responsible for my mother's care. "

>

> Here is what happened.

>

> Someone at the hospital had called the daughter to tell her of her

mother's accident when her mother was brought into Emergency. When

the daughter arrived at the hospital, a doctor told her that her

mother had only bruised her forehead when she fell but she should

stay in hospital for a few days. The daughter agreed and tried to

calm her mother, who wanted desperately to go home.

>

> Four days later, the daughter arrived to visit her mother and heard

that she had been transferred to Orthopedics. She asked a nurse what

this was all about and the nurse said she wasn't sure but thought it

had " something to do with a broken hip. " Apparently her mother had

gone for a walk and slipped on some loose tiles left in a hospital

corridor by maintenance workers. The daughter asked to see a doctor --

she wanted to know if the broken hip required surgery -- but a nurse

told her all the doctors were in operating rooms.

>

> That night, after dinner, a nurse called to say her mother had

suffered a heart attack. The daughter rushed to the hospital and

found her mother in Intensive Care, conscious but terrified of all

the machinery around her. A few days later, the mother was

transferred from Intensive Care to Urology, not because she had any

urological problems but because there were no other beds available.

>

> The daughter arrived the next morning, this time to find her mother

unconscious. She called for help and a nurse arrived, then a doctor.

They pushed the daughter out of the room and told her to wait outside

in the corridor while they examined her mother. Minutes later, the

nurse and the doctor came out and said her mother had probably

suffered a stroke and a specialist would have to be called. And, no,

she couldn't go into the room.

>

> The specialist arrived an hour later, went into the room, stayed

about two minutes, then started yelling at the nurse. " Why did you

call me to look at a dead patient? This better not happen again! " he

shouted, then walked off stiffly down the corridor.

>

> The daughter's letter prompted an official inquiry, which

determined:

>

>

> * A CAT scan had not been performed when the patient arrived

because of repairs being done to the scanner.

> * The patient had not been examined by an attending physician

during her entire stay.

> * An autopsy report, completed three weeks after the autopsy,

indicated the patient died of heart failure following a stroke.

> * X-rays of the broken hip indicated that surgery should have

been scheduled promptly.

> * The patient's lab tests were never located.

> * Maintenance crews repairing floors had been reprimanded on two

previous occasions for not removing materials after their work.

> * The identity of the specialist could not be determined because

the nurse who attended at the woman's death had only been working at

the hospital for a week and had not completed her notes.

> * When the patient kept asking to go home, a resident prescribed

a sedative, which was administered an hour before she fell and broke

her hip.

>

> It could happen to you.

>

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