Emergency rooms errors are medical malpractice. Victims and their families do not always realize that an error or malpractice was involved because we normally only go to the emergency room for a sudden and life-threatening problem. It can be difficult to distinguish an unavoidable poor outcome from injury or death caused by an error in the emergency room. An experienced emergency room error attorney can help you determine whether your injury was caused by malpractice, and if so, he can help you prove it and get the compensation you deserve.
Common Emergency Room Errors
The emergency room is often a very rushed and crowded environment. Patients may have very long waiting period before getting treatment and then may be given very little attention and feel neglected and even insulted by the behavior and attitude of emergency room staff. To a certain extent, that is just the nature of emergency rooms, but all too often it goes beyond acceptable and results in avoidable injury or death to patients.
Common emergency room errors include:
- Failure to fully evaluate a patient
- Misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose conditions or events such as stroke, heart attack, and other emergencies
- Delayed treatment
- Failure to fully treat
- Refusal to treat (patient dumping)
- Failure to monitor a patient
- Medication errors including giving sedatives or painkillers to intoxicated patients
- Surgical errors
- Laboratory errors
- Unsanitary practices resulting in infected wounds, surgical infection, or cross contamination with diseases
- Contaminated blood transfusions
- Improper reading of test results, such as X-rays
- Releasing a patient without informing them of a dangerous condition or injury
Emergency Room Errors and Hospital Responsibility
Emergency rooms are high stress environments for doctors and staff. The situations they have to deal with are unpredictable from moment to moment. On a busy night it can be overwhelming. Losing patients can be emotionally draining, to say the least, but they must press on for the rest of their shift and return the next day to face more of the same.
Working in the emergency room is tough, to say the least. It is an environment ripe for error, but hospitals have a duty to minimize the likelihood of errors as much as possible. Hospital negligence and wrongdoing that can lead to emergency room errors includes:
- Understaffing
- Inadequate facilities
- Unsanitary conditions
- Poor or inconsistent record keeping policies
- Poor or inconsistent patient tracking policies
- Poor or inconsistent medication administration policies
- Failure to properly train staff regarding these policies
- Failure to screen doctors and support staff
- Maintaining, encouraging, or allowing illegal and unethical policies and practices such as patient dumping and discrimination
When you face a legal problem, your best source for help is a capable attorney. You want to make sure the lawyer or law firm you hire is qualified to represent you with your particular problem. The law can be a very complicated matter. You don’t have to go it alone. Find the right attorney for you! If you believe that your injury is the result of a surgical mistake, please contact us call us today at 1-877-LOSS RECOVER (567-7732)!