Emergency Room Errors
Stressed Medicine: Emergency Room Errors
We are all familiar with the kind of scenes from medical movies or programmes like ‘E.R.’: packed waiting rooms, injured people on every bed and trolley, doctors barking orders, nurses scurrying to comply, machines beeping and blipping – in other words, general pandemonium. In real life, it really isn’t much different and no matter which way you look at it, it’s a highly stressed environment in which split-second decisions need to be made constantly. This is why emergency room errors are a very real phenomenon.
Emergency room errors can range from:
- Not having quick enough access to the correct medical professional;
- The incorrect medication or emergency treatment being administered;
- Failure to prescribe infection-killing antibiotics for patients with open wounds or fractures;
- Misdiagnosis of the symptoms of an impending stroke or heart attack;
- X-Ray, CAT scan and MRI study bungles;
- Failure to properly diagnose and admit a patient to hospital for observation when required; or
- Discharging of patients when they are not medically stable, often leading to death hours or days later.
Of course, another factor that contributes largely to South Africa’s rate of emergency room errors is a shortage of properly trained and qualified medical professionals. In fact, whereas the World Health Organisation recommends a minimum 1:1,500 doctor-patient ratio, South Africa is currently sitting at a ratio of approximately 1:4,000. This means that many hospitals are short-staffed and those professionals that are on duty are stressed, tired and overworked. Certainly not a good recipe when you combine this with a typical high-speed, high-octane emergency room environment.
Should you have been adversely affected by one or more emergency room errors in the course of your treatment, contact Adele van der Walt Attorneys Inc for expert medico-legal advice.
For more information on this subject, please give us a call at 012 460 3668 (SA) or e-mail us at clare@avdw.co.za
