In what is perhaps every family’s worst nightmare when they take a loved one to the emergency room (ER), one woman had the unthinkable happen to her: her husband was declared dead by the attending doctor when he was actually still alive. Allegedly, her husband died as the direct result of the hospital mistakenly assuming he was dead and thus failing to provide him with urgent care. The widow is now suing, alleging this is a medical malpractice case.
Many people think of medical malpractice as an obvious mistake made during surgery or a doctor writing the wrong prescription for a patient. However, the failure to diagnose a patient (or diagnosing them incorrectly) is also a medical malpractice case if a doctor does not follow standard procedure.
According to the deceased’s widow, the doctor in this case failed to take his vital signs after he was brought in for a suspected heart attack, in spite of her insisting that he was still alive. The doctor then took his vital signs two hours after declaring that he was dead and found a pulse, ordering that he be transferred to a different medical center. By the time he was transferred the next morning, he was pronounced dead a second time, having suffered from a collapsed lung (due to CPR efforts) that went untreated for too long. His widow now hopes that by pursuing charges against the hospital, she can prevent this from happening to someone else, thus better ensuring that doctors—even those moving quickly in the ER—listen to patients and their families.
Emergency Room Negligence
Given the number of malpractice errors made each year by doctors in various capacities and settings, it comes as no surprise that some of these catastrophic mistakes would take place in the ER, where doctors and nurses are often moving fast and are often overworked. However, that doesn’t mean that patients deserve a lower level of care; if a patient is injured due to the doctor or hospital’s negligence, they may have a claim for compensation.
Although it seems shocking that a doctor could misdiagnose a patient as dead without even taking their vitals, the issue of patients waiting to be admitted and receive urgent care is actually a serious one in these hospitals, in addition to doctors failing to order the proper tests for a patient and misdiagnosing symptoms–both common ER errors that give rise to malpractice claims.
Harrell & Nowak
A medical malpractice case occurs not only when doctors make obvious mistakes during surgery, for example, but also often when they act too quickly and misdiagnose, sometimes with fatal consequences. If you or a loved one has been harmed by medical negligence, contact Harrell & Nowak today. We are here to help you.