Kentucky First State to Decriminalize Medical Errors

[ClaraC]

Criminalizing medical "mistakes"? Um, no. If someone who is usually very competent makes an error, they should not be charged with a crime. Holy cow. Otherwise, no one will enter the medical field, and everyone will go into retail or business.

[yspobo]

Originally Posted by Jowel

Yes, that's an important precaution. I know some people get annoyed (or amused) by being asked the same questions like this over and over again.

But in a busy practice, where there are many different medical people running around trying to get to so many patients, I can see how they could get people mixed up if they weren't careful.

In response to the OP's question:

Honest, good faith mistake: That seems like a civil issue, where a doctor or health professional would need to use their malpractice insurance to pay out a claim if they screwed up or be sued if they were negligent and someone suffered some bad effects that were beyond normal risks of success or non-success of a procedure.

Intentional Act: There was a case in my area a couple of years ago where a vile nurse (certainly an exception and not a rule) was intentionally giving people the wrong medications. That person should definitely be treated as a criminal.

There's a situation in between where the person has lack of care about the patient and is neglectful. The person may not have intentionally harmed the patient, but he or she doesn't care that the patient was harmed.

[ocnjgirl]

Originally Posted by Three Wolves In Snow

One person making an error is understandable.

What is not understandable is when you have multiple health care workers involved in a procedure. One may make a mistake, but everyone else there should double and triple check everything.

Example: I read a story years ago about someone (believe it was in GA) had gone in to get a leg amputated. Apparently, whoever it was that was to mark the leg, marked the wrong damn leg. The surgeons went ahead and amputated that wrong leg. So now, the patient, who should have been left with one leg, lost BOTH of their legs.

At what point do people take responsibility for being careless before cutting off body parts? SURELY there was some type of information in that patient's records. Upon seeing the mark on the leg, indicating that was the leg to amputate, the people on that team should have VERIFIED that it was the correct leg. Clearly no one did that.

So yes, the person who marked the wrong leg made a mistake. Maybe they were exhausted from who knows how many hours of working.

But EVERYBODY ELSE on that team had the ability to double check, triple check, to ENSURE that the correct leg was marked before going ahead with the amputation.

It's not always one person involved, and they should all be held accountable.

Have you had health care lately? Every facility is understaffed and overworked, and there are going to be mistakes made in those circumstances.

[Three Wolves In Snow]

Originally Posted by ocnjgirl

Have you had health care lately? Every facility is understaffed and overworked, and there are going to be mistakes made in those circumstances.

So what! This is healthcare we are talking about, not some waiter bringing you the wrong entree.

[ocnjgirl]

Originally Posted by Three Wolves In Snow

So what! This is healthcare we are talking about, not some waiter bringing you the wrong entree.

It doesn’t matter. If you are caring for 17 patients instead of 10, of course the person is going to be more prone to error. If you’re working the 11th hour of a 12 hour shift, you’ll be more prone to error than the first hour. Again we are talking about human beings, all of whom are fallible regardless of intention.