Professional Malpractice

Surgical injuries: Some patients suffer injuries when a surgeon performs an operation on the wrong body part or even on the wrong patient. A recent report in the Archives of Surgery revealed that wrong-site or wrong-patient surgeries occur about 2,700 times per year. Surgical errors are still common even when the surgeon operates on the correct patient in the right place, particularly with laparoscopic and bariatric operations. Another common type of surgical error happens when sponges or other instruments are left inside the patient. Malpractice can also occur after surgery when medical personnel fail to properly monitor the patient and provide proper post-operative care.

Anesthesia errors: Anesthesia is administered so that lifesaving procedures can be performed on patients about 40 million times per year. An anesthesiologist must carefully administer the anesthesia and monitor the patient’s vital signs throughout the operation. Brain injury, suffocation, paralysis, heart attack, coma and even death can result from mistakes in dosage and monitoring. In some instances, improper dosage can allow a patient to “wake up” during an operation, experiencing pain and distress.

Medication errors: One of the most common forms of medical mistakes, medication errors cause a significant number of injuries and deaths each year. Illegible handwriting and confusing abbreviations sometimes result in medication errors, as can medical professionals’ failure to properly communicate with each other. Another issue is drugs that have similar sounding or appearing names.

Failure to diagnose and treat in a timely manner: Failure to properly diagnose a serious condition early when the condition is still treatable leads to many preventable deaths each year. Commonly misdiagnosed illnesses include cancer, heart attacks, appendicitis, strokes and pulmonary embolisms. Sometimes diagnostic errors happen because doctors fail to spend enough time talking to patients about their symptoms, other times they are the result of bad communication among the medical personnel themselves.

Labor and delivery: The birthing process is a dangerous time for both the baby and the mother, and medical mistakes can result in injuries or death for both. Medical personnel present at a birth have a duty to monitor the status of mother and child, and to act quickly when problems develop. If they are negligent, permanent injuries can occur that will affect the child’s life.

Emergency room malpractice: Georgia emergency room staffs can sometimes be overwhelmed with patients and become chaotic, inefficient and mistake-prone. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that nearly half of all medical malpractice-related deaths are from ER errors.