I just want
to follow on from Tuesday’s blog about under reporting of doctors who are
guilty of repeated poor treatment. This has been followed by a report from the
BBC on the frightening number of major mistakes over the last four years. These
are the sort of incidents that the government say should never happen. In other
words these are the most basic of mistakes.
The report
includes the following –
322
incidents of foreign bodies left inside a patient after surgery,
214 cases
of surgery on the wrong part of the body
73 cases of
tubes going into a lung
58 cases of
wrong implants being fitted
There have
been over 750 such cases over the four years.
And these
are just the most obvious cases. When you consider the number of cases of undiagnosed
fractures, missed illnesses, lost records, administrative delays etc the
picture is alarming.
Forgive me
for labouring the point but this is nothing to do with a ‘compensation culture’.
This is nothing to do with doctors being afraid to treat patients because they
are afraid of being sued. This is nothing to do with practitioners refusing to
try new procedures for fear of litigation. We need to disregard all of the
rhetoric associated with the increasing number of claims for negligence.
The reality
is that the NHS needs to do all it can to eliminate these errors. We will not
solve the problem by making it as difficult as possible for victims to bring
claims. We need to stop the incidents happening in the first place?
I suspect
that most lawyers who do this work would love to see the day when they were no
longer needed.
That day is a long way off and will probably never arrive.
But this
report is all the more reason why we need to stop blaming victims and their
lawyers and concentrate on remedying the real problems.
This is a well balanced article. How would we feel if the patient was "our mum or dad" you would feel different and want the best possible care and rehabilitation post injury.
ReplyDeleteThe current media culture is to make you feel "guilty" for, expecting high quality care when needed.
Most people can accept mistakes but not situations of clear neglect of duty, which as a result impacts the person in terms of their roles, their quality of life, their ability to work and their ability to do basic every day tasks; for which appropriate compensation is more than justified
Matthew Hawes
Independent Occupational Therapist / Case Manager.
Hi, Nice post thanks for sharing. Would you please consider a shout out to my website on your next post, I’ll return the favor. Please email me back. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAaron Grey
aarongrey112@gmail.com