No wonder people sue over medical malpractice

[BSdetect]

Last edited Wed Sep 14, 2022, 10:27 AM - Edit history (1)

19 years I've been in the USA

Every year I visit local hospital sometimes several times.

Almost every time they try to give me a tetanus injection.

I tell them I'm allergic.

They say they will fix my record.

Yet the same thing repeats over and over

It is incredible.

Do I have to sue them to make it stop?

Another appointment next week.

I'm beyond exasperation.

Amazing update: Just found out my brother was also allergic to tetinus over 40 years ago.

He just had a tetanus injection as they told him the new tetinus is produced differently.

They made him wait two hours after the injection as a precaution. He had no reactions.

This is in Australia.

Perhaps the same applies here?

Will email my Dr re this.

[Croney]

1. May I ask what you are allergic to?

[BSdetect]

2. Tetanus

[Hekate]

10. So if you get tetanus from a rusty nail, you die of anaphylactic shock and not from lockjaw?

I ask this because generally people who are “allergic” to a particular vaccine, are actually allergic to its vector (vector is probably wrong word).

When I was a child, a good long while ago to be sure, it was my younger brother who overreacted to some vaccinations. My mother would say it was the horse serum used in creating it. I do recall scientists started using eggs at some point — I recall photos of the laboratories. Then it turned out some people are allergic to eggs (not my brother, though) — so eventually scientists came up with some other work-around.

Sounds like your brother found another way around a similar problem. Since you are in touch with him on this issue, you might ask him for as much technical info as he can give you, so you can share it with your doctors here.

Meanwhile, it boggles my mind that your files have not been stamped with a big red ALLERGIES warning.

[Horse with no Name]

3. At what point do you stop them?

Before you sign the consent or before they inject you with a vaccine that you refused to sign?

[multigraincracker]

4. Might want to get an Medical ID alert dog tag.

Not only for when you are unconscious, but you can flash it at them while awake too.

[dclarston13]

5. You are your best advocate at the Drs

So long as you can speak for yourself. The medic alert bracelet is a good idea because of this.
FWIW I have have experienced terrible medical malpractice in the past, with a a butchered surgery and one clear mistake on another. Both put me out of commission for a over a year. I am now retired over the last one. I Could not find a lawyer to take the case as they said there is no money in it for them, one even said, well if you died we would have a case.

[PCIntern]

6. I ran a dental office for 45 years...the word is

LAZINESS.

I’m tired of hearing nonsense about how overworked everybody is, it takes all of four seconds to enter or write down if someone is allergic to something. You know, a doctor’s office is as good place to die I as any and it is a stupid place for something like this to happen. Here’s the problem: it isn’t only your health history people aren’t paying attention to, it’s all the subtleties: symptoms and signs, which cause misdiagnoses every day which affect virtually all of us at one time or another. Some of those misdiagnoses will kill you.

An old adage is: the patient will tell you what’s wrong with him or her but only if you’re willing to listen. Most healthcare professionals are not really listening, despite the fact that they claim that they are. I know: I lived it.

[Handler]

8. I have to disagree and I was a clinician in a hospital for 35 years

The staff in hospitals are severely under staffed, over worked and under paid. I question whether or not running a dental office gives enough perspective to paint with the broad brush of laziness.
Most of the problems with hospitals come from the top. Administration for the most part does not understand how clinical medicine works and they have no desire to learn. Staff in hospitals especially major trauma centers are getting fed up with working conditions. There might be a reckoning.

[PCIntern]

9. Not to write down a medication allergy is

Malpractice-in-the-making.

We were understaffed too, let me tell you due to economic concerns, and we made sure the patients survived their treatment and their prescribed medications. That is a paramount importance, in any medical environment and if you think for one minute that treating both medically and immunocompromised patients for my entire career was an easy task, you have another thing coming.

[Handler]

11. Comparing a dental practice to a hospital, especially a trauma center is over the top.

Hospitals are treating patients that are having heart attacks, strokes, MVA’s etc… life and death decisions and actions occurring every minute of every day.
A much different environment.

[PCIntern]

12. Yeah.. it is, but each individual has responsibility for his or her

Patients.

If you want to defend stupidity and claim that someone is too busy to write down whether a patient is allergic to a medication then that’s fine. The question is which side of the courtroom would you rather be sitting on when the lawsuit is brought. I knew an 85-year-old gentleman who broke his neck at the seashore, was transferred to Jefferson hospital wherein he had successful spinal surgery which saved his life. About four days afterwards a worker from the dietary division brought his dinner Consisting of pot roast and vegetables and the gentleman Asked her “ am I supposed to be eating this?”. She replied “yeah your names on it” and walked out. He choked to death on the food. It so happens his nephew was a significant attorney in Philadelphia and did was not required to sue the hospital since they just sat down and made a settlement. But his uncle was dead. This is the kind of idiocy that I’m referring to. All she had to do was look and see that his name was in fact not on the meal, he was still supposed to be on liquids only. It was for the person next-door.

So please don’t bother telling me that someone is overworked or too busy. In fact in my dental practice I’m seeing between three and five patients an hour, have to keep everything straight and I have never made a serious mistake involving extracting the wrong tooth, filling the wrong tooth, addressing a patient by the wrong name. People need to focus and do their jobs and I’m tired of excuses.

[Handler]

13. I find your straw man argument to be weak and I won't respond to it...

However, I will respond to the statement about making a serious mistake, I don’t believe you. I guess if you are the person who is deciding what is a serious mistake and what is not , you feel you have the privilege to make such a statement.
I will tell you, there are thousands of RN’s, cath lab staff, special procedures staff, Respiratory therapist and many others who are under staffed and over worked to the point of mistakes being made. What brought us here was, you using the broad brush of being lazy to describe some of the finest people I have ever worked with. You know nothing of that environment.

[ratchiweenie]

7. I suggest you go to the hospital when you are not seeing a doctor. There is normally a registration

desk and an information and administration desk. Go there and MAKE them change your records while you sit there. Make threats if you have to. They will take care of it.