Illinois Medical Malpractice Blog

According to an article, “after several (medical) mistakes, miscommunications, and misdiagnoses,” a woman ended up having both arms and legs amputated and since then filed a medical malpractice suit against her doctors. The woman who had a history of kidney stones went to the emergency room with kidney stone pain. Instead of treating the kidney stone, the stone turned into an infection that led to septic shock. This septic shock turned her limbs black from loss of blood circulation. All limbs had to be amputated due to this medical malpractice oversight, according to the article.

Read more about the medical malpractice suit here.

A medical malpractice lawsuit was recently filed on behalf of a family who lost their 22-month old daughter as a result of medical negligence. In May 2007, the child was taken to a hospital’s emergency room with a fever. Within an hour of being at the hospital, her temperature rose to 105.7 degrees. Despite this rise, the attending doctor in the emergency room sent her home. The family returned to the emergency room where the child died less than an hour after arriving at the hospital. The lawsuit alleges that the attending physician was negligent because he deviated from the standard of care by sending the family home. Instead, tests should have been run to measure her blood counts. To read more about this medical malpractice lawsuit, follow the link.

According to federal officials, The University of Chicago Medical Center has violated the federal law of Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act by not following emergency room procedure. The Chicago hospital failed to provide a medical screening to a 78 year old man who died last month in their emergency room. The alleged violation could lead to loss of federal funding from the Medicare health insurance program for the elderly. The Joint Commission, which is given the power to accredit hospitals, is also going to investigate the alleged violation. The Illinois hospital said it has the correct policies and procedures in place and will take disciplinary action against its staff employees who may not have followed protocol.

Read more about the alleged hospital violation here.

According to the Crain’s Chicago, the University of Chicago Medical Center is under fire again, this time for the death of an elderly man who passed away on February 3 in the hospital’s emergency room. The article did not give specific details about this possible case of medical malpractice.

A spokesperson for the hospital acknowledged that the hospital may not have followed proper care procedures, “Our investigation found that proper policies and procedures were in place but staff members may not have followed the protocol. Appropriate disciplinary actions are being taken.” Recently, the University of Chicago Medical Center has come under criticism after announcing plans to redirect emergency room patients to different hospitals in a measure to decrease wait times.

Read the full article about the University of Chicago Medical Center.

A hospital’s misdiagnosis a boy’s cancer led to his death according to his family’s complaint filed against the hospital. The hospital originally diagnosed the son with bacterial meningitis and released him. The condition later was determined to be an aggressive form of anaplastic central nervous system T-cell lymphoma cancer that killed the boy. Two of the four patients that received the boy’s organs have died from the cancer. The lawsuit also claims doctor negligence.

Read more about the hospital’s misdiagnosis lawsuit here.

A hospital was fined $25,000 for a surgical error in 2007 when a doctor left a sponge in a patient's body after emergency surgery. According to the article, the surgical error was “likely to cause serious injury or death” to the patient. This error took a second surgery to correct. Apparently it was the job of the nurse and scrub technician to count the number of sponges removed from the patient during the first surgery, but due to the overly bloody nature of this particular surgery, a sponge could have been miscounted.

Read more about the surgical error here.

A mom lost her limbs during a horrific hospital stay is making great progress in using her artificial legs. The woman lost all four limbs and much of her eyesight to medical malpractice at a hospital. She was sent home from the emergency room with only painkillers for a kidney stone. When the condition worsened, medics failed to take her back to the hospital, causing her to develop sepsis. She awoke from a two week coma partially blind with gangrene ravaging her body. The woman is suing both the hospital and emergency service for medical malpractice. To read the full story, click here.

Medical professionals have a tendency to speak in abbreviations. In such a busy, hectic setting such as an emergency room or a doctor’s office, abbreviations shorten time. However, some patients do not follow and are left in the dust. Here is a website where you can enter the abbreviation and then the search engine provides the definition.

Abbreviations can lead to medical malpractice when a handwritten abbreviation is misinterpreted as meaning something different than what the physician intended. In fact, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has issued a “do-not-use” list because of their probability of misinterpretation, leading to dosing errors and serious medical malpractice.

For the website.

Researchers received $3.7 million to find ways to reduce medical error in various hospital and pharmacy departments. Researchers will try to develop safe ways in handling patient test results because receiving results are more difficult in larger hospital institutions. Also, the researchers will try and find safer ambulatory sedations. Another goal is to reduce medication error from high-risk medications.

For the full story, click here.

An annual report issued by the American College of Emergency Physicians gave the nation a D- grade for access to emergency care. The report stated that ER care is fraught with significant challenges and under more stress than ever before. A shortage of doctors and nurses with an increased demand for urgency care creates disaster and threats of medical malpractice.

For the full article.

In a rare blog post, here we are giving advice on how to avoid germs and avoid hospitals while traveling over the upcoming holiday season. Illnesses and trips to hospitals sometimes follow after flights. For example, in 1994, a woman transmitted tuberculosis to at least six of her fellow passengers. Here are tips to avoid that hospital trip:

1. Sit near the front of the airplane. There is better airflow in the front of the aircraft.
2. Do not drink coffee or tea on the airplane. The EPA shows that water in airplanes’ water tanks isn’t always clean and coffee and tea are made from that water, not bottled water.
3. Sanitize your hands after leaving an airplane bathroom.
4. Wash or sanitize your hands after getting off an escalator.
5. Wash or sanitize your hands after using an ATM.

For the full article.

Appendicitis is one of the most common surgical diagnosis’s made in the Emergency Room. However, failure to diagnose acute appendicitis is among the five leading causes of successful ER suits. A study found that as many as 30% of patients with acute appendicitis have been seen previously and were incorrectly diagnosed by a prior physician. A large number of appendicitis cases do not have a temperature, right lower abdominal pain or other findings. Missed or delayed diagnosis of acute appendicitis results in higher perforation or peritonitis cases with higher complication rates, such as death, recurrent small bowel obstruction due to adhesions, impaired fertility in women, and prolonged hospitalizations. These problems occur in Emergency Rooms all over the country, including Chicago. To read the full story, click here.

A security camera video shows the shocking reality of a woman's preventable hospital death when she is left to die after falling. The video shows that the woman fell from waiting area chairs and was neglected for nearly an hour before any hospital staff attended to her needs. The video even shows hospital staff watching her suffer and not taking any action. This graphic example shows the dangers of unattentive emergency rooms and medical malpractice deaths.

Surveillance footage from a hospital shows a woman falling from a chair, writhing on the floor, and, finally, dying, as workers fail to react for over an hour. Esmin Green, 49, waited in the emergency room for almost 24 hours until she fell face down on the floor from the chair she was sitting in. She fell at 5:32 a.m., by 6:35 a.m., when a medical staff member who was flagged down by another person in the waiting room nudged Green’s body with her foot, she was dead. Until that staffer was summoned, Green hardly drew any attention. Patients sitting nearby did not react at all, security guards and a hospital staff member seemed to have noticed her body a minimum of three times, but, from the video, it does not appear that any of them attempted to aid her. In fact, one security guard could not even be bothered to leave his chair, instead, he rolled it around the corner, stared at her body, then rolled it back. Green had been involuntarily committed the day before the incident and was still waiting for a bed when she fell; her body stopped moving approximately half an hour after she fell. Reportedly six people have been fired because of the incident, amongst those let go are security personnel and staff members.

This is not the first issue with the hospital’s mental health unit, which was sued last year by the state’s Mental Hygiene Legal Service and Civil Liberties Union, who called the unit “a chamber of filth, decay, indifference and danger.” The lawsuit further states that patients who complained too much were occasionally handcuffed, beaten, or injected with psychotropic drugs. The parties in that suit went before a judge on Tuesday where the hospital agreed to institute reforms, including checking on patients in the waiting room every 15 minutes. Additionally, the hospital will make attempts to shorten the average waiting time to 10 hours within the next four months.

Adding to the shocking situation is the fact that Green’s medical records appear to have been altered or falsely filled out in an attempt to cover up the incident. For example, there is a note for 6 a.m. that claims she was “awake, up and about” and another 20 minutes later claiming she was sitting in the waiting room and that her blood pressure was normal, in actuality, Green was either dead or writhing on the floor during those times.

It is unclear whether Green’s family will seek to file a wrongful death lawsuit for this apparent medical malpractice. To read more about Green's shocking death click here.

A study of doctor response time in emergency situations published in the New England Journal of Medicine found a strong correlation between delayed time to defibrillation after in-hospital cardiac arrest and a patient’s likelihood of survival. The study lasted five years and covered nearly 15% of the large hospitals in the country. The factors the study identified as highly correlated with response time were hospital size and admitting diagnosis. Small hospitals tended to have quicker response time while patients admitted with non-cardiac diagnoses experienced a higher response time following cardiac arrest.

Surprisingly, however, the study also found a strong correlation between race and response time. In fact, African-Americans and Native Americans experienced nearly 25% greater response times when undergoing cardiac arrest. 25% is extremely significant when considering that only 30% of patients underwent defibrillation after two minutes. However, any time beyond two minutes exceeds the guidelines-based recommendations. This speaks to major problems in hospital response time where nearly 1/3 of responses exceed widely-accepted recommendations.

The significance of this delayed response time? When defibrillation was delayed, patients only had a 22% chance of survival while reasonable response time resulted in a nearly 40% survival rate. Furthermore, the study’s numbers were skewed in favor of successful hospitals as the study was voluntary. One of the study’s authors even noted that this likely resulted in responses from only generally quality care facilities.

Following this study, physicians should realize seconds do make a difference. Many of us have images of doctors on television yelling “Code Blue” and running to revive their patients. In reality, unfortunately, physicians are not always as quick to the punch. In hospitals where such delays are a recurring event, the lack of an adequate response is nothing short of negligent.

For the full study, click here:

One of the greatest organizational problems facing hospitals today is the battle over medical records. Many patients find that it can take months or years to get a hold of their own medical records after treatment. Even worse, some families of victims of medical malpractice or wrongful death have waited for years to obtain their loved one’s medical records from hospitals. Often, lost or missing records are simply part of hospital error and not a deliberate attempt to delay, but on some occasions hospitals may frustrate a patient’s records request purposefully. Patients and victims’ families must be aware that statutes of limitation often require that medical malpractice lawsuits be filed within a certain period of time after the injury occurs or is discovered. This means that patients and victims’ families must decide to file a medical malpractice lawsuit and contact their medical malpractice attorney as soon as possible and begin the medical records request process.

Read more here.

Preventable deaths, injuries, and illnesses have been found to be caused by emergency room delays. ER waiting times have increased from 22 minutes in 1997 to 30 minutes in 2004. Heart attack patients are exposed to more serious dangers as their wait time has doubled on average, but the risks caused by delay are great. In a study in the journal Health Affairs, 1/4 of heart attack patients had to wait 50 minutes or more before getting treatment.

The lack of universal health insurance in America, as well as the closure of emergency rooms around the country have contributed to the overflowing waiting rooms where patients may wait dangerous amounts of time. People without healthcare insurance are often forced to visit emergency rooms for free care, regardless of urgency.

Click here for the full article

In a recent medical malpractice lawsuit, a birth injury that was allegedly caused by a nurse-doctor communication breakdown yielded a $1.2 million settlement. Nurses were concerned that the birth was taking too long, but were hesitant to consult the doctor about these fears due to his reputation of angry responses to perceived criticism. The infant developed cerebral palsy.

Physicians too commonly react harshly to instances where they feel bothered by the nursing staff, such as late-night clarification requests, difficulties with procedures, changes in patient condition and more. The negative consequences of verbal abuse or disruption in hospitals are significant; reduced communication, team collaboration, information transfer and concentration are all reported as responses to disruptive behavior. Patient safety is compromised in many ways by these reported breakdowns. Medical errors increase in disruptive or abusive situations and the quality of care decreases. Patient mortality increases with these outbursts. Medication errors have also been caused by verbally abusive hospital staff relations.

Click here for the full article

Continue reading "Hospital conduct leads to reduced patient safety and medical malpractice lawsuits" »

A Chicago medical malpractice lawsuit was filed today by John J. Perconti of Chicago medical malpractice law firm Levin & Perconti against St. Anthony Hospital and an emergency room physician. The lawsuit alleges that the hospital and doctor failed to diagnose meningitis in a 14-year old baby girl which caused her death.

The baby was evaluated and treated in the emergency room at St. Anthony on March 14, 2006. A blood culture test was ordered and Motrin, Tylenol, and IV fluids were prescribed. The child was sent home with her mother. At 7:00 p.m. that evening, the emergency room nurse was notified by the laboratory that Anna’s blood culture (test) showed the presence of gram positive cocci (multiple forms of bacteria).

Attorney John Perconti explained the medical error: “When the emergency room nurse and doctor learned the abnormal results of the blood culture they should have notified Elizabeth Nunez immediately and advised her to bring Anna back to the ER for further evaluation, hospitalization and antibiotic therapy. Instead, Dr. Lachica called Elizabeth at home to check on Anna’s condition and advised her to see her own pediatrician in the morning. St. Anthony’s nd Dr. Lachica failed to inform Elizabeth that Anna had tested positive for gram positive cocci, a life-threatening bacteria. They also failed to notify Anna’s pediatrician about this abnormal result. With this type of infection, you must err on the side of caution or face the risk of losing a life.”

Click here for the press release

Surgery poses many risks. One, flash fires, has recently been shown to be more common than previously thought. In one of the states with the most comprehensive collection of statistics, 28 fires a year in operating rooms has been the average over the last three years. Medical malpractice lawsuits have not been uncommon results of surgical fires. Fires in operating rooms have not gained as much attention as other surgical hazards, such as wrong-site surgery, but these fires have proven themselves dangerous by causing serious injuries and deaths. One of the most fatal surgical fires occurs during throat surgery. Common fire hazards in todays operating rooms include the use of 100% oxygen, which can increase the flammability of gauze and hair when leaked into the air; alcohol-based skin cleansers; and the increasing use of advanced surgical tools like lasers and electrocautery devices. One of the most commonly cited causes of surgical fires is poor communication between surgeons, nurses and anesthesiologists. Prevention policies have been on the rise as more oversight groups have recommended them.

Click here for the full article

A recent study reviewed almost nine hundred medical malpractice claims to find that 27% of those cases involved errors by residents, interns, or fellows. The result of these errors frequently resulted in substantial personal injuries or death, despite the fact that many of the errors occurred in the outpatient setting.

Researchers also looked at how these errors by residents, interns, or fellows could have been prevented. They noted that errors in their judgment resulted in 72% of the medical malpractice claims. More than half of these medical trainees errors were due to a lack of supervision. The study concluded that there is a relationship between poor teamwork to preventable errors and quality of care.

Click here for the full article.

All patients being treated in hospitals, whether for serious surgery or routine procedures, should be made aware of Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus (MRSA), an infection acquired during hospitalization. 100,000 people die of MRSA annually. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one out of every 22 patients will acquire an infection during hospitalizations totaling 1.7 million patients a year. It is also estimated that out of that group, 99,000 would die. MRSA has recently been proven as avoidable in many cases. Pittsburgh Veterans Hospital has cracked down on doctor hygiene and hospital cleanliness, while taking other minor precautions and has noticed a decrease in MRSA infections. According to the hospital's chief of staff, "the infection control program cost about $500,000 a year, including test kits, salaries for 3 workers, and the $175-per-patient cost of gloves, gowns and hand sanitizer. The hospital... realized a net savings of nearly $900,000 when the number of infected patients fell." Hospitals should take note, especially since Medicare will no longer pay for "preventable" conditions induced by carelessness or medical malpractice in hospitals. One of the "preventable" categories is certain types of hospital-acquired infections. The hospitals themselves will have to cover these often enormous amounts.

Continue reading "Avoidable infections acquired in hospitals kill 100,000 a year" »

A 19 year-old sophomore at Howard University recently sued George Washington University Hospital and Howard University Hospital after being denied proper care. According to the medical malpractice lawsuit complaint, the plaintiff was given a date-rape drug at an off-campus party and was then denied a rape kit at several hospitals because she allegedly appeared intoxicated.

According to the medical malpractice lawsuit complaint, the plaintiff was given a date-rape drug that rendered her semiconscious. She was then assaulted. Immediately after the assault, she sought medical assistance at Howard University Hospital accompanied by two witnesses. She was denied treatment because she appeared intoxicated, was drifting in and out of consciousness, and was vomiting. The police were also informed and said that a rape kit was unnecessary.

For the full article.

The Illinois legislature has passed, and the governor has signed, legislation requiring the screening of hospital patients for drug-resistant staph infections. The MRSA (methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus) infections infect over a million patients and kill tens of thousands every year. MRSA is the most common infection acquired in hospitals and Illinois is leading the nation in confronting the controversial issue. The law becomes effective immediately. Hospitals are now required to test all patients in intensive care units for MRSA and isolate patients with the bacteria. The bill was controversial because some hospital infection control practitioners claimed it would hinder response times to emergency threats. The same group introduced legislation requiring hospitals to prevent the spread of infection by analyzing which infections posed the most risks at different facilities. Although this bill was intended to replace the MRSA bill, both were passed into law. Fortunately for patients, the bills are aimed at protecting patients from unnecessarily contracting dangerous infections in hospitals.

Click here for the full article

A transplant surgeon was recently charged with purposely advancing the death of a patient in order to recover his organs. A medical malpractice and wrongful death lawsuit was filed. The transplant community is extremely worried that this allegation could steer people away from offering their organs for donation. When people are deciding whether or not to donate their organs, one of the biggest fears and deterrents is that doctors will hasten their death. The transplant community has been working hard to reverse this mentality and this recent charge is a serious setback. There are about 97,000 people nationally are currently awaiting a transplant.

Click here for the full article.

Hayes Robinson wandered from Sacred Heart Hospital, in Chicago, IL, on Sunday and his family continues to look for him. Hayes is a 76-year old Alzheimer’s patient. According to the family, Mr. Robinson had tried to walk out of the hospital on a previous visit. Hayes is without his blood pressure and Alzheimer’s medications.

Hettie May Knox, Mr. Robinson’s companion, said the hospital staff told her, “he signed himself out about an hour ago.” The patient told the hospital staff that he lived just around the corner. However, Mr. Robinson did not live just around the corner, in fact he lived over four miles away!

Elderly patients with Alzheimer's disease should never be left unattended. The weather this week in Chicago is another concern for the victim's family. With extreme heat blanketing the city, Mr. Robinson stands a good chance of getting heat stroke. If you or anyone you know has any information on the whereabouts of Mr. Robinson please contact Area 5 SVU police at 312-746-8365.

Levin & Perconti successfully settled a case against Manorcare this summer for $825,000 when a severely demented patient wandered from the facility in January 2004 and died from overexposure to the sub-zero temperatures.

Click here for the full article

The family of the woman who died while waiting in a hospital emergency room has indicated its intent to file a wrongful death suit against the hospital. The 43 year old woman died of a perforated bowel, vomiting blood and suffering pain for 45 minutes in the hospital's emergency room without ever getting treated. The woman's boyfriend even called 911 in an attempt to get immediate medical attention. A subsequent 911 call then tried unsuccessfully to get an ambulance to take the woman to another hotel. The 911 tapes further show that the staff at the emergency room did nothing but watch as the woman slowly bled to death. The hospital had a record of failing to provide care and was under investigation at the time of the incident.

Click here for the full article on the lawsuit.
Click here for the full article on the 911 calls.

A jury awarded $11 million in a medical malpractice suit against an emergency room physician for failing to diagnose a condition that led to stroke and paralysis. The man went to the emergency room with a severe headache, and doctor's failed to diagnose an infection that had spread to his brain. While the emergency room technician ordered a CT scan that should have detected the infection, the treating physician sent the man home with a painkiller. Days later, the man suffered a stroke and slipped into a coma. Had the man been properly treated by the emergency room physician, the stroke and its debilitating repercussions could have been avoided.

Click here for the full article

After several days of deliberation, a jury was unable to reach a verdict in the medical malpractice suit alleging that nurses and doctors breached the ordinary standard of care. The family of the deceased sought $3 million because when the deceased arrived in the emergency room, nurses only spent fourteen minutes with him before leaving for a lunch break. Had the nurses performed an adequate physical examination, the plaintiff argued, the nurses would have been able to discover and treat the fatal condition.

The defendants argued that the deceased suffered from overwhelming infection and should have gone to the hospital the day before.

Click here for the full article.

A recent HealthGrades study revelaed that 248,000 patient deaths over a three-year period were preventable, and mistakes multiply during the night shift. Every type of patient is at danger during the night.

Studies have shown that babies born at night are 16% more likely to die than babies born during the day. Patients going into cardiac arrest at night were also more likely to die. Pediatric patients admitted at night are more likely to die within two days. The risks appear even more serious when birth injuries and pediatric injuries also occur preventably. Medication administration errors also multiply at night. Weekends are also dangerous for patients.

Because workers with seniority get priority shifts, night time staffers are not only fewer, but less experienced. Night staffing issues are not limited to doctors and nurses; mental health, social services, directors, and administrators are also understaffed on the night shift. Not only are night workers less experienced, they also suffer from fatigue- a major contributor to night shift errors.

Beware of the danger that medical errors are more frequently made at night. Click here to read the full article, including a personal account of a preventable death occuring during the night shift.

A woman whose feet and fingers were amputated as the result of complications with her tummy-tuck surgery was awarded $30,000,000 by a jury in the personal injury lawsuit. The woman had the tummy-tuck to correct muscle damage due to three caesarean sections, and 20 days later blood and fluid began collecting in her wound, causing her extremities to turn blue. The emergency room “spent too little time treating [the woman] and left the hospital at one point to change his pants.” The hospital staff also failed to administer and analyze tests in a timely fashion. The woman’s feet and fingers were ultimately amputated as a result of medical malpractice and gross negligence.

Click here for the full article

A State House narrowly rejected a medical malpractice bill that would have made it more difficult to successfully sue E.R. medical providers for alleged malpractice. The bill was the only major piece of medical malpractice legislation considered during the current session. The House voted 28-28 on the bill, with 31 “yes” votes needed for approval by the 60-member chamber. The bill would have raised the burden of proof for lawsuits over emergency care. The existing lower standard requires a “preponderance of the evidence” and the new standard would require the higher stand of “clear and convincing evidence.”

For the full article.

A recent study by two hospitals said that overcrowded hospitals are pushing too hard to streamline and cut costs. These goals are putting their patients at risk of medical malpractice such as medication errors, nerve injuries, infections, and other easily preventable mistakes. The study found that hospital goals of cutting costs and improving patient safety are working against each other.

For the full article.

A jury recently awarded $21.5 million to the family of a woman. In its decision, the jury concluded that the medical malpractice victim died after receiving negligent care from an emergency room doctor.

For the full article.

The family of a woman who died eight years ago won a 28 million dollar medical malpractice lawsuit. The verdict is one of the largest personal injury jury award in the state’s history. The victim was a 34 year-old mother of three who went to a hospital three times in four days with flu-like symptoms and died of complications from streptococcus pneumonia. The family claimed in the wrongful death lawsuit that the emergency room treatment (or non-treatment) was negligent.

For the full article.

Reminder: American Association for Justice (AAJ) will be hosting a telephone seminar tomorrow regarding emergency room misdiagnosis. The seminar will feature tips for screening potential medical malpractice lawsuits, and strategies for presenting a failure to diagnose in the ER at trial.

To register or call 1-800-622-1791 or 202-965-3500, ext. 612.

After more than 20 people rushed into an emergency room to face the unthinkable sign saying “closed,” officials in charge of emergency medical services are striving to keep that from reoccurring. A task force suggested a series of recommendations for how one state's ERs can be made more effective.

Because of staffing shortages, emergency rooms often are not able to see all of the patients that need to be seen and are often a dangerous place. The long periods of delay may also be the cause of medical malpractice.

For the full article.

Two doctors will likely face fines in a proposed settlement from the state Board of Medicine disciplinary committee for their medical malpractice.

In one case, the physician failed to comply with patient care standards with regard to a seriously injured patient in the ER when he did not perform a rectal exam despite signs of pelvic trauma and rectal bleeding. More than a week later, a pelvic CT scan revealed that the patient had a rare flesh-eating disease. A medical malpractice lawsuit filed in this case settled out of court for $345,000. The fine imposed by the Board of Medicine would require this doctor to pay $4,000 and reimburse the state $5,500 for its costs. It would also require the doctor to take five hours of continuing medical education.

Continue reading "2 physicians will likely face fines under proposed settlement with state disciplinary board" »

Although hospitals are supposed to be home to helpful caretakers, they are sometimes the home of medical malpractice, medication dosing errors, and hospital-related infections. Your attentiveness to your care should not end when you’re ready to leave.

1. Update your medical history data. Ask for lab results, copies of scans, a list of medications, and put the new information in your file.
2. Don’t depart on “fatal Friday.” Research has shown that survival rates are the lowest among patients who leave hospitals on Friday. Scientists suspect that because docs are swamped at the end of the week, they spend less time providing patients with postsurgery instructions.

For the full article.

1. Run the numbers. If your surgeon seems to eager to operate, check out the rates of the most commonly over-performed procedures by region, city, or hospital.
2. Scrub off the bugs. Five days before the surgery, start taking two showers daily, washing with an antiseptic cleanser. Studies show that this reduces the risk of infection.
3. Opt for a.m. surgery.
4. Empty the O.R. Ask unnecessary personnel to be kept out of the O.R.
5. Get tucked in. Ask for an extra blanket. The combo of a cold operating room and anesthesia can lead to mild hypothermia, which would slow your recovery.
6. Up the water intake. Hydration equals healing – shoot for eight 8- to 12-ounce glasses of water a day in the weeks before your visit.

For the full article.

1. Ask how long they have been in the field. Because of the current nursing shortage, you may not have much choice in terms of who cares for you, but if you have concerns, talk to the nurse manager.
2. Discuss slow response times with the nurse manager.
3. Triple-check your meds. A nurse is supposed to double-check to make sure that the patient is receiving the correct medication. To protect yourself from medication dosing errors, triple-check. Ask what the medication is that you are receiving and why you are getting it.

For the full article.

Your vigilance should continue even when you’re in the hospital bed to avoid the ills associated with hospital visits.
1. Know who’s who. Make sure all people identify themselves and convey changes in your condition only to doctors and nurses.
2. Demand clean hands. As for a pump dispenser of alcohol-based hand sanitizer and put it on your night stand. The staff will get the hint.
3. Check out the stethoscope. Ask your doctor to sanitize his stethoscope.
4. Sanitize yourself. Keep lathering your hands with the alcohol-based hand sanitizer. This will protect you from organisms on your body that cause infections.
5. Dose up on aspirin. Ask your doctor and pharmacist before adding it to your drug regimen, but aspirin can activate the stress response of bacteria and keep it from adhering to your tissue.
6. Protect your bed. A recent study found that an elimination of visitor contact with a patient’s bed was able to stop the spread of bacteria and eliminate infections by 70 percent.

For the full article.

1. Have someone research your doctor.
2. Enlist a drug pro. Ask if a clinical pharmacist can handle your case. This can reduce the risk of medication dosing errors and adverse drugs reactions. If the hospital does not have one, ask if a staff pharmacist can perform the same functions.

For the full article.

Your quality of treatment can also be enhanced by what you do when you speak with the E.R. doctor.
1. Create a timeline. Telling your doctor when symptoms started and subsided is almost as important as relaying what they felt like. The sequence of symptoms can provide clues to the diagnosis.
2. Discuss your vital signs.
3. Include the minutiae. Divulge details that are not in your medical file, such as dentist visits and recent travel trips.
4. Take a whiff. Since E.R.s are fast paced, its hard to know when a doctor or nurse last washed their hands. There is an antiseptic foam used in E.R.s to kill bacteria and viruses which you can recognize because it smells like cheap gin.

For the full article.

Your attentiveness to your care should continue when you’re sitting in the E.R. in order to ensure the safest hospital visit.

1. Stay on their radar. Earlier this summer, a 49 year-old victim of Illinois medical malpractice complaining of chest pain died in an E.R. waiting room. Bring a friend who can speak up for you.
2. Do not read the magazines. If you have kids with you, do not let them play with the toys. British researchers recently found toys in an ICU swarming with various strains of bacteria.

For the full article.

Another step in ensuring survival in your hospital visit is knowing how to talk to the triage nurse. When you first enter the E.R., you will probably be told to talk to the triage nurse on duty. The triage nurse signs all of the patients in, takes their blood pressure and temperature, and sets the order in which they’re seen based on severity of symptoms. Because of hospital overcrowding, triage nurses are very busy. When speaking to the nurse, do the following:
1. Be descriptive. Pinpoint your pain’s location and describe it using analogies.
2. Be specific.
3. Be honest. Come clean about every pill you have ingested, even if it is embarrassing.

For the full article.

As previously mentioned, hospitals can be a dangerous place. MSN Health & Fitness suggests that before heading to the E.R., call your primary-care physician. What you may perceive as being urgent, he may be able to treat in his office. The exception: chest pain – there is nothing an office-based doctor can do to assist in treating a heart attack. Also, if you call your physician and he meets you at the E.R., you will get must faster attention then if you went alone.

For the full article.

MSN Health & Fitness recently released an article full of tips on how to leave the hospital healed and not hurt. The tips begin with what to do while you’re still healthy. Although many view hospitals as havens from illness and accidents, hospitals are actually home to bacterial traps and medical and medication malpractice. Medication dosing errors harm 1.5 million patients each year. Infections from hospitals are now the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.

1. While you’re still healthy, gather all of your medical data. Doctors will need a list of medications you’re taking, your medical history, immunizations, allergies, the name and phone number of your physician, lab reports, and copies of recent EKGs and MRIs. This information can help save critical seconds in a hospital visit.
2. Identify the best hospital. There are many resources available on the internet to help determine which hospital is best to suit your needs.

For the full article.

Despite astonishing technology and armies of skilled physicians who routinely save people who would not have made it a generation ago, America’s emergency rooms are dangerous because there are not enough doctors or technology to go around. A recent Parade magazine article explored why America’s emergency rooms are so dangerous and determined that the main culprit is the chaos in an E.R. The emergency rooms are overburdened and under-funded, treating ever more patients with ever fewer resources.

The hospitals lack beds, but patients keep coming, waits increase, and the opportunity for medical malpractice increases. Emergency rooms are so crowded that 500,000 ambulances every year are diverted to other hospitals.

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An Illinois woman was awarded $2.1 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit against a hospital whose substandard medical care caused her to suffer a stroke. The doctors could have prevented her stroke by administering a clot-busting drug when the woman entered the emergency room.

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A 49 year-old woman entered a Waukegan hospital complaining of typical heart attack symptoms: nausea, shortness of breath, and chest pain. A triage nurse saw the woman fifteen minutes after arrival, classifying her condition as “semi-emergent.”

Twice over the next excruciating two hours, the woman’s daughter asked nurses when her mother would be admitted to see a physician. When her name was eventually called, a nurse found the woman slumped in a waiting room chair without a pulse. Shortly thereafter, she was pronounced dead.

The coroner’s jury concluded that the 49 year-old woman died of a heart attack but also indicated that the death was a result of negligent medical malpractice: gross deviations from the standard of care that a reasonable person would have exercised in this situation.

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