"It wasn't like, I'm going to lie." It was, "I'm going to support my colleague." This was the mindset of Dr. Lars Aanning, a retired South Dakota surgeon, when he testified at a medical malpractice trial roughly 20 years ago. At the time, he claimed he had never seen...
It's a situation you never want to face: stuck in the ER, desperate for answers about what's happening to a person who is dear to you. Far too often, the triage patients experience in these emergency department settings is brutal. The snap judgments are...
Last April, we posted a blog entitled "What Steps Do Hospitals Take to Avoid Retained Surgical Items?" While this remains a necessary component of patient safety in the OR, new technologies have been released in recent years to further minimize this risk. These new...
"Complications" is a term that doctors use a lot to refer to things that can go wrong. For surgery, there a number of these things that commonly occur, including infections, blood clots and after-effects from anesthesia. What isn't commonly known, however, is that...
Today's society has benefited greatly from medical science and the hard work of doctors and other medical professionals. Unfortunately, many medical professionals are regularly required to work extremely long hours. While most people would consider a 12-hour shift a...
Admitting the frequency of medical errors is difficult for the mind to do. After all, these errors occur in a health care system to which we entrust ourselves and our loved ones for care. To keep anxiety at bay, you naturally want to believe the best about this...
Not surprisingly, failure to diagnose topped the list in a recent survey of doctors on reasons why they get sued. After all, proper diagnosis is crucial - especially if cancer is involved. Yet diagnostic errors, including delayed diagnoses, are remarkably common. In...
A new trend is emerging where hackers are infiltrating hospital systems and disabling their computer networks for ransom. This has the effect of bringing modern medicine to a halt, as many hospitals are reliant on technology to render care to its patients. Instead of...
There are certain things that should never happen when you go into surgery. These are aptly referred to as "never events" because of its seriousness and preventable nature. An example of this would be retained surgical items, such as sponges, needles, and components...
The cute term - "preemies" - belies the serious consequences that babies born too soon can face. The complications of a premature birth may be evident right away or take time to unfold. In the short term, a premature baby may have difficulty breathing or eating. In...
