Pregnancy Mistakes

Two women ages 25 and 22 were both told by doctors that their pregnancy was no longer going well. The doctors told them that they both had miscarriages when in fact that wasn’t true. One lady kept telling them to check again because she didn’t believe it. They both found out shortly after they were told they had miscarriages, that both of their pregnancies are doing well. They both have healthy babies now.

            The fact that doctors can make this big of a mistake is kind of terrifying for when I decide to have children. I don’t want a doctor telling me that my baby is dead just because they can’t find a heartbeat. There are external and internal ultrasounds they can perform if they don’t hear a heartbeat. Maybe they are just too lazy.

            A Union County couple was excited to welcome their newborn baby girl, but horror struck in the delivery room. The woman’s labor progressed so fast that the Doctor wasn’t able to be there at the time and left the nurse to deal with it. The baby hit the nurse in the chest and the baby fell to the floor head first. They kept trying to tell the couple that their baby girl was fine but that was a lie. They found out their baby girl suffered a skull fracture and developed a hematoma in her brain.

http://www.greenvillemedicalmalpracticeblog.com/2011/09/medical-error-leads-to-suit-after-horror-in-the-delivery-room.shtml

Prevention is key

The Kidney Transplant Program was put on hold at the USC University Hospital after the wrong patient received a kidney. The kidney was a match to the patient even though it was the wrong patient, which happened to save his life. The patient who was supposed to receive the kidney received a new one a few days later. The surgeon said that they have so many safeguards that he doesn’t understand how something like this happened. The hospital blames human error for the mistake.

            Tabitha Mullings was diagnosed with kidney stones and was sent home with painkillers. Within 24 hours she had developed a sepsis infection which cut off the circulation to all of her limbs. The infection also made her legally blind. She was forced to get both arms and both legs amputated. Her fiancé proposed to her while she was in the hospital and she said that is what keeps her going.

            I don’t really understand how she got the infection but I think it was because of the medication the hospital had given her. I also am not sure how you would accidentally put a kidney into the wrong patient. You have to read the patients chart and check to make sure that person was the same person on the donor list. The patients also wear the wristbands that say their name and date of birth. You just have to pay attention to prevent things like this from happening.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,489467,00.htmlhttp://www.newser.com/tag/1120/1/medical-errors.html

Malpractice

A pediatric critical care nurse accidentally gave a baby a dose of Calcium Chloride which wound up killing the baby. The nurse had accidentally calculated the medication wrong which is a human mistake. No one is perfect. After this occurred, the hospital fired her. The nurse then committed suicide.

            People are now arguing whether they should fire nurses and doctors for mistakes even if they do kill people. Paul Levy which is the former CEO of the hospital says that firing a nurse or doctor for their mistake will not improve the hospital. Instead he is saying that they should be included in trying to prevent accidents like this.

            There was another mistake when a doctor had accidentally started to drill into the wrong side of a patient’s head for surgery. The surgeon was never fired even though he made a mistake just like the nurse.

            In my opinion I think it depends on the degree of the accident to determine if the person should be fired or not. If they perform acts of malpractice or negligence then yes they should be fired. People are human and they do make mistakes. Hospitals can improve their quality and help to prevent mistakes but you can never completely stop mistakes from happening.  

http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/05/nurses-fired-fatal-medication-errors.html

Nurse Education

Martine Ehrenclou’s mother was put into the hospital for an acute pancreatitis. The doctors were used to this simple standard procedure to help the older lady. This simple procedure turned fatal when Martine’s mother died months later due to complications such as Pneumonia and a staph infection. The inspector general of the U.S Department of Health and Human Services released a report which stated that they found out that 80 percent of hospital errors go unreported by the workers.

            They looked at data from the hospitalized Medicare patients that showed majority of medical errors in hospitals do not change the policies or procedures of the staff. Some of the errors were wrong medications, extreme bedsores, infection and even death. They say that some hospital staff may not recognize “what constitutes patient harm”.

            How do hospital staff not know what can harm patients? They go through plenty of schooling to know better than that. If they don’t even know what can harm their patient how did they even earn their degree yet alone pass their classes?  How are we the patients supposed to be able to trust nurses or Doctors when they don’t even know what can harm us? Patients are not test dummies. They are real people that trust these “professionals” to make us better and even save our lives. We depend on these people. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/hospital-staff-report-hospital-errors/story?id=15308019

Medical Errors.

Doctors at a Rhode Island Hospital operated on the wrong side of a patient’s head for the third time in the same year. On November 23, 2007 an 82 year old woman needed an operation to stop the bleeding between her brain and skull. The Neurosurgeon started drilling on the right side of her head even though he was looking at the cat scan during the surgery. The bleeding was on the left side, not the right. The doctors caught the mistake and closed up the hole on the right side of her head, then began to drill on the left side of her head. She was fine even though the doctors made a mistake.  

          Another story was about an 86 year old man who had surgery done on the wrong side of his head. He died three weeks later because of the mistake.

          A patient at Park Nicollet Methodist Hospital had the wrong kidney removed when the patient went to have surgery to have the cancerous kidney removed. The day after surgery the Pathologist found no cancer on the tumor they removed which is how they found out it was the wrong kidney. The family didn’t want any details released for their own privacy.

http://www.oddee.com/item_96576.aspx

Funny but True

A man started to complain about pain in his abdomen and his testicles. His father took him to the hospital and they took him into surgery because they wanted to prevent the spread of cancer since they thought he had Testicular cancer. They removed the testicle that they thought had cancer. During surgery after they removed the testicle they saw that his tubes were tangled that led to his testicles. The tubes had been untangled once they removed the testicle. They figured out that the man didn’t have cancer and didn’t need his testicle removed. All he needed was to have his tubes untangled. The man lost a perfectly good testicle.

        One day a Flight for Life pilot received a phone call about a man who no longer wanted his penis. The man took a meat cleaver and cut off his own penis. He then decided that he no longer wanted to even see his own penis so he swallowed it. He was bleeding out and was flown to the nearest hospital. The man started to freak out because he realized he made a mistake and that he now wants his penis reattached. The surgeon was waiting for him when he got there. The surgeon asks “What have you had to eat in the last 24 hours? Well, except for your penis."

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/el3r1/what_are_some_of_the_worststrangestfunniest/

Easily Avoidable Mistakes

Benjamin Houghton (a 47 year old veteran) had been complaining of pain in his left testicle. He also stated that the left testicle was shrinking. Benjamin’s doctor decided that it was best to remove the testicle so that he did not develop cancer. Before the surgery there were quite a few mistakes. There was an error on the consent form and the medical personnel didn’t mark the proper surgical site. They removed the healthy testicle by accident and left the bad testicle. Benjamin received a settlement of 200,000 dollars. 

Willie King was a 52 year old man who needed his leg amputated. The surgeons realized in the middle of the operation that they were removing the wrong leg but it was too late because the leg was already removed. The surgeon’s medical license was suspended for six months. They fined the surgeon for 10,000 dollars and the surgeon additionally paid Willie 250,000 dollars.

Donald Church was a 49 year old man who had a tumor in his abdomen. He went to the University Of Washington Medical Center in Seattle to have surgery to remove the tumor. Surgery went well except for the fact that they left a 13 inch metal retractor in his abdomen by accident. This happened four other times at this same hospital. They removed the retractor with no problems and the hospital paid Church 97,000 dollars.  

http://www.oddee.com/item_96576.aspx

Funny mistakes and sad mistakes

Nancy Andrews and her husband decided to undergo in vitro fertilization from a clinic in New York. They were so excited to be expecting again. Their new addition named Jessica joined the family on October 19, 2004. When Jessica was born they noticed she did not look like them. Jessica was black. The father is white and the mother is mixed. Doctors at the New York Medical Services for Reproductive Medicine did DNA tests and found out they had given Nancy the wrong sperm.

            Jésica Santillán was a 17 year old girl who died 2 weeks after receiving the wrong heart and lungs. Jesica was a Mexican immigrant that came to the U.S. three years before to receive treatment for a life-threatening heart condition. Jesica went to Duke University Hospital in Durham, N.C. to have her transplant. The doctors did not check to see if the organs would match her blood type which caused Jesica her life. Jesica had type O blood and they gave her organs from a person that had type-A blood. After they put in the wrong organs she went into a coma. The doctors tried to reverse the situation by taking her back into surgery to switch the organs back but she suffered severe brain damage and died right after.

http://www.oddee.com/item_96576.aspx

Medication Errors

A lady named Tesome Sampson was on bed rest when she was only five and a half months pregnant with her daughter. Tesome was supposed to be given progesterone supplements to keep her from going into early labor but was instead given Prostin which is a medication used to force dead fetuses out of the womb after miscarriages. Tesome told the nurse she was having really bad cramps so the nurse said that she just had to go to the bathroom. While on the toilet Tesome gave birth to her daughter Traniya. She was only five and a half months pregnant. Traniya suffered severe brain damage and still does to this day. She was hospitalized for a long time because of health complications. If Tesome was never given the Prostin her baby girl would have been healthy. Now Tesome’s daughter is handicap and will be for the rest of her life.

                The sad part is that just hours before they mistakenly gave Tesome the wrong drug, they did the same exact thing to another woman that was on bed rest with twins. It happened in the same hospital as well. The lady lost both of her twins. How do you make the same mistake in the same hospital only hours apart?

                I don’t know how this happens but to have it happen twice is just sad. Nurses need to read the label and not only double check the label but also triple check the label.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=8383062

People are human, they all make mistakes right? What if those mistakes are the ones that kill someone you love. In the United States there are over one million medication errors a year.
I read some stories about medication errors which could have easily been avoided. Michael Blankenship was a 15 year old autistic boy. He was going to the hospital for a routine dental appointment. They gave him a Fentanyl patch for his pain. Not only was he supposed to not be given the patch, but they overdosed him on it as well. Fentanyl is a pain medication commonly used with people who have cancer, not someone getting a tooth removed. Michael died in his sleep that same night.
What about other people that went through this?
Here's another story about a man everyone knows about, Dennis Quaid.
Dennis and his wife had 5 miscarriages before they decided on a serogate mother, a woman who will carry their baby made with their own eggs and sperm. It succceeded and they were blessed with twins. Their twins were supposed to be given only 10 units of the infant Heparin, which is a blood thinner for children. Instead they were both given 10,000 units of the adult Heparin. The babies were bleeding out but the nurses did not tell the parents until the next day.
They called the hospital to check on the babies an were told everything was fine. That was a lie and they weren't tole until the nest day what had happened.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Autistic-teen-s-fatal-overdose-blamed-on-hospital-882714.php