Print this page
Email a friend
Click the arrow to play audio file:Our full podcast is available for 6 weeks. After 6 weeks you can purchase the program on CD or MP3 from our online store.
The Institute of Medicine reports that the average patient experiences at least one error every day he is hospitalized. The annual death toll from medical errors is estimated at 44,000 to 98,000 Americans. How can you protect yourself or a loved one from a dangerous mistake? Learn how one woman discovered that her doctors had covered up a serious surgical error they made when she was a teenager.
Guests: Janet Lynn Mitchell, a patient’s right’s advocate and author of Taking A Stand. Her Web site is http://www.janetlynnmitchell.com/
Pierce Scranton, MD, an orthopedic surgeon in private practice in Seattle, Washington. He has been team physician for the Seattle Seahawks and president of the American Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Society. He is author of a novel, Death on the Learning Curve. His Web site is: http://www.piercescranton.com/
Here are Dr. Scranton's questions:
Top 10 Questions to Ask Your Doctor Before Accepting Medical Treatment
How long have you been in practice?
What is your experience in treating this condition?
What are the treatment options, and what other options are available that you or the health plan are not offering? If you don’t understand the doctor’s basic explanation of your condition and treatment, then by all means ask him or her for more information.
What are the possible complications of the proposed medical treatments or surgeries?
If there are any complications, how will you correct the problem?
Aside from your own partners, who would you go to for medical treatment if you had this condition?
Are you personally going to perform the surgery?
Will others assist and participate, in a major way, in this medical treatment?
Can I ask your bookkeeper what my financial responsibility will be? You need to know in advance…and don’t be afraid to negotiate!
Our son was born 7 weeks premature and given gentamycin intravenously possibly in a PIC line. None of the doctors whom we usually use were involved in the on-site hospital care. We were particularly concerned about the large number of health care professionals rotating through his care at the hospital. He has permanent sensorineural hearing loss now. To date all tests have shown no genetic causes. One would think that there was a responsible unit at the hospital that would review situations to insure that this does not happen again.
What do you do if you have experienced unexpected results from a surgery? My wife had her veins stripped and thinks the doctor may have cut on the wrong side of her leg. Would a doctor say in medical records that he made an error?
The surgeon removed the wrong fibroid tumor from my breast - then tried to charge me for it, along with the hospital. It took a lawyer to get those charges removed from my records. And then I had to trust the guy to go in again and get it right. Thank heavens it was benign.
My 85 year old mum was mis diagnosed with a urinary tract infection in the ER. I thought they might have taken a dirty sample but no one listened. So they gave her a urinary tract specific antibiotic. (We later found out she had pulmonary edema related to a virus.) But the meds, 3 days later, depleted her sodium and she took a very bad fall that put her in the hospital. By then, the urinary tract culture came back negative and we could verify it had been the wrong med for her. She recovered in the hospital but it was an arduous journey for her. That's where we spent Christmas this past year.
Dr. Scranton's book sounds great, I am looking forward to reading it.
The subject of the sometimes contradictory goals of excellent medical education and excellent clinical care in teaching hospitals has been studied in detail. For people interested in learning more about this subject, two of the best books (in my opinion) are:
Forgive and Remember by Charles Bosk
Complications by Atul Gawande