The terrifying truth: Our big, complex, and imperfect health-care system can sometimes make you sicker. In this three-part series, Health investigates why more than 100,000 people a year are dying from medical errors and millions are being injured, what safety measures may help, and how you can protect yourself during your three points of vulnerability—at the hospital, your doctor’s office, and the drugstore.
By Lorie A. Parch
Additional reporting by Kimberly Holland and Brittani Tingle
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Comments (7)
Please visit our website: http://www.leapforpatientsafety.org and learn about how to reduce medical errors. Thank you.
Josephine Cicchini
jccicchi@yahoo.com
I believe my doctor intended on murdering me after he refused to see me for ten days after I and then my husband began speaking to him– not his nurse about my obvious conjective heart failure the began after he pressured me to take herceptin. My heart had already been compromised by chemo and I have a family history of parents and grandparents dying in their forties from heart failure.
When I began coughing uncontrollably and respirations my husbund counted while I was asleep wee 31 instead of the normal 11, the docotor was called a third time on the fifth day of my descent. Again, husband talked to the doctor, not the nurse. He said “you wife is a hystrionic and hypochonriac. I am not about to reward this by making an extra appointment. He never ever mentioned me going to the ER and I was too sick to think of it.
Ten days after the first call I made I arricved by myself for that “regularly schedued appt.”
His owrds, :Something is terribly wrong. Your blod oxygen saturation is 82% I have to get you hospitalized todayk but it’s a big event weekend and my nurse is having a hard time finding you a room. You can wait in this dark room here on this bed until your husband complete his work day four hours from now and he can come and get you. I begged him for oxygen but he said NO and I was not checked on by nurses.
When I got to the hospital the nurses were frighted I was leaving this world, because my blood oxygen level was 80 and they said people die at 80. They couldn’t get me hooked up on oxygen fast enough.
My final diagnosis upon release five days later was, “Probably herceptin induced congestive heart failure and radiation induced pneumanitis with pulomary infiltrate.” For the five days I was in the hospital he told me my illness could not possible have anything to do with herceptin.
A year later which was about two months ago my new doctor left to take a call and closed the door with my fat chart sitting on the desk. Knowing my HIPPA rights, I opened it immediately to the hospital addmissions data. I read to my horror :DEATHEXPECTED IN ONE TO TWO DAYS FROM rapidly progression of pulmonary infiltration of advanced breast cancer. No wonder the put me in a private room as far down the hall from the nursing station as those cancer ward rooms go. Nursed would not answer my paged.
I had just had a PET scan that showed I was cancer free. The inital treatments worked. He’d told me that 21 days prior. I believe he put ne in that dark room and refused me oxygen because he wanted me to die there, since he thought I was dying so he wouldn’t have to answer to his boss and the others on the oncology team about why he had refused to see me. I’ve since learned that Standard Of Care required that he call and ambulance for immediate transport once he knew my blood oxygen data.
After I read that terrible admission note, I requested my medical records and I wrote underlined that I especially wanted the page that stated, “Feath expected in one to two days. Five days later my medical records arrived (much faster than normal and THAT page was missing. I believe there was a conspiracy to protect the MD. I read on his dictation for the office visit the day of admission that my sx level had been 87%. He falsified data. I am doing fine — after 8 months on heart meds my heart is the correct size again and I’m not on any heart medicine. I thank God for that good cardiologist and I’m happy with my new onc. She won’t discuss these errors. Who is she protecting? Sounds familiar, eh?
written above
I took my Aunt to the hospital for a gall bladder surgery, they took an EKG and said it was not normal, but that alot of people’s EKG are not normal, so they went ahead with the surgery. It was suppose to be an out patient surgery. They kept her in the hopital overnight. They next day she was to be released but the doctor wasn’t there so a intern signed her out. That night she was rushed back to the hospital in Waterbury CT and the transferred to a hospital in Bridgeport, CT she died the next day. It has a heart problem. Lots went wrong that could of been avoided if procedures were followed correctly. She did need to died. Thanks for listening. Nancy
I am a registered nurse in the operating room. I admit there are doctors, nurses and other health care providers out there that are not good at their jobs and just don’t care. Unfortunately, mistakes happen, nothing is perfect and expecting perfection in health care is now the norm. My best advice to anyone out there, ask lots of questions, don’t be rude and accusatory (these people are taking care of you to the best of their ability even if they aren’t very good at it), keep someone with you to help sort out questions, and if you feel that your being ignored, etc. ask for someone else, switch doctors or something else. Not everyone in health care is bad, many are overworked, underpaid and HUMAN.
How do I check on the ratings of individual
doctors and hospitals?
My Mother’s Surgeon has been neglectful in treating my mothers eye glaucoma. She has very limited eye sight now because of this. She has talked to Attornies and they basically state “Doctors can make mistakes at times.”
Come on, she is totally blind and limited to what she can actually do. This has been a definate stumballing block for her living and life style.How can this be fair and just?