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Treatment error definition, examples and aids
contents
- Treatment errors are common
- The medical responsibility
- When does the doctor stick??
- Simple and rough mistakes
- Guilt or innocence?
- Causes of treatment errors
- Knife in the body
- Woman dies because doctors think she is dead
- Death after tonsillitis
- Cardiac arrest at beauty surgery
- The wrong leg amputated
- Misdiagnosis of malicious intent
- What can patients do?
Treatment errors are common
The Medical Service of the Federation of Health Insurance Funds reported 4,064 treatment errors in 2015. The AOK, however, estimates the real malpractice at around 190,000 a year, and every tenth victim would die from it, according to AOK. Whether treatment errors are more common today than in the past, can not be proven. However, the sensitivity of the patients has increased and the suspected errors are increasingly reported to the health insurances.
More and more patients are directed to their health insurance on suspicion of treatment errors. (Image: Lars Zahner / fotolia.com) The medical responsibility
The medical profession requires ever greater responsibility: medical professionals are still responsible for examination, diagnosis and therapy. In addition, there is the overview of the increasingly complex equipment, and the doctor is also liable if, for example, patients suffer from excessive exposure to radiation, because the devices are not maintained.
Physicians also need to educate patients about the opportunities and risks of treatment and give them time to decide.
When does the doctor stick??
A physician is liable if he performs a treatment that is not appropriate, incorrect, or inconsistent with scientific knowledge. There are, however, historical exceptions and exceptions enforced by lobby interests: in particular the last definition (not according to the state of scientific knowledge) also applies to homeopathy, and yet many physicians - due to their conviction of the effect - are homeopathic. " Treatments ".
A complication after an operation, a bad healing process, ineffective drugs, all this does not have to be a treatment error. This is only when an inappropriate, neglected, inaccurate or improper treatment of a patient has demonstrably led to harm.
Even "trial and error" is not necessarily a treatment error. In countless illnesses, symptoms overlap. Dizziness, for example, can also be associated with a vitamin D deficiency, as in brain diseases, a flu infection, diseases of the inner ear such as the cervical spine and not least in mental health problems.
A doctor who educates patients about the possible causes is not negligent once he addresses a possible cause whose treatment is associated with few side effects to see if the symptoms cease or persist.
An incorrect treatment may also be due to a patient suffering from a very rare condition whose symptoms are consistent with widespread discomfort. Then it is indeed a mistake in treatment, but not necessary for negligence of the doctor.
Here is the question: Can and should the respective doctor be informed about this disease? If so, then he acts negligently because he does not recognize the disease. If not, then not.
Various patterns of disease move in a border area, that is, the latest research is far from every practitioner known.
Simple and rough mistakes
Treatment errors are made by the physician in every dealings with patients: diagnosis, treatment, counseling, medication or transport.
The delaying of a diagnosis can be as much a mistake as a wrong diagnosis, a non-recognition of the patient's right, the refusal of a treatment, a timely inadequate education, an incomplete explanation of the contents as well as an error in collecting the findings.
In the case of a simple treatment error, the patient must prove the error, but in case of a gross error, the doctor must prove that he is innocent.
Rough mistakes are defined as actions that appear irresponsible from an objective medical point of view, because a trained doctor is not likely to make such a mistake.
From a legal point of view, there is a treatment error if, firstly, a proven false action on the part of the physician results in damage to the patient, which, third, is the cause of this wrongdoing.
So legally irrelevant is a treatment error that remained without consequences for the patient.
If the faulty treatment has no consequences for the patient, this is legally irrelevant. (Image: Zerbor / fotolia.com) Treatment errors first of all have civil consequences, namely compensation for pain and damages for the injured party. If it concerns negligence and thereby caused negligent bodily injury or negligent killing or missing or insufficient education and thus bodily injury, expect the physician criminal consequences.
Guilt or innocence?
Not with any medical error does the doctor blame. A physician is not responsible if he uses to the best of his knowledge and belief methods of his time, which later turn out to be harmful.
For example, the doctors did not blame them for infecting patients with deadly disease in past centuries because nobody knew about bacteria and viruses, and disinfection and sterility were unknown.
Meanwhile, doctors who intentionally or negligently make mistakes in treatments that are commonplace in their profession are guilty to the full extent: a surgeon who pulls a simple suture so badly that the wound gets infected, a dentist who makes a big hole or a physician who prescribes a drug that causes blood flow to a patient with severe bleeding injuries.
It is also a treatment error if the therapy is successful, but milder methods are timely, for example, if a dentist pulls a molar with tooth decay, although he could have filled the hole.
No malpractice is when a doctor performs a new and risky operation - with full education and with the consent of a patient who would inevitably kill a disease without help.
This applies, for example, to early heart transplants, in which the immune system of the operatives repelled the foreign hearts and the patients died after a short time.
Causes of treatment errors
1) Revision: The medical staff in clinics is working under high time pressure, so the volatility errors are inevitable. Emergency and accident physicians must make decisions in seconds that can mean death or life.
2) Vanity: Some physicians nurture the omniscience of the omniscient and do not dare to say "I do not know the cause of their discomfort." Or they are too vain to admit a wrong diagnosis and do not correct it. Or they know that a colleague could treat the disease better than themselves, but conceal this from the patient.
3) ignorance: Often doctors treat illnesses wrong because they have no idea of the actual illness. Negligence is always the case if they could have this knowledge and, for example, would be obliged to attend further education, but they do not.
4) Routine: Surgery, usually without any problems, can make an experienced surgeon forget that he does not pay attention to complications with the same degree of attention as he does in a procedure that he considers risky. If serious problems arise, he may not recognize them until it is too late.
Routine interventions carry the risk of mistakes being made by carelessness. (Image: AntonioDiaz / fotolia.com) 5) Lack of experience: No master has yet fallen from the sky, says an old proverb, and physicians also learn from the medical world in medicine.
6) Wrong conviction: A healer can be so convinced of a scientifically refuted method that he performs it because he is convinced that it works.
7) profit greed: Similarly, if a doctor leaves a patient in the hospital longer than necessary for no medical reason, it also prescribes lengthy therapies, although he knows they are superfluous or prescribe expensive medications, even though there is a cheap replacement.
Knife in the body
Jorge Alberto Gonzalez Campos of El Salvador was the victim of a robbery in 1995. One of the culprits stabbed him in the head with a knife. Gonzales came to a clinic and doctors treated the wound, but said they could not remove the blade.
They did not tell the person that the blade was in the head. Only 12 years later, Gonzales felt a strange bump in his skin and felt the shape of a blade. He went to doctors who refused to operate on him.
Only six years later, the neurosurgeon Eduardo Lovo removed the knife from the now 44-year-old man's body. The result was a nine-centimeter long blade, which had grown into the left eye socket.
The Canadian Bill McNeely came to a hospital after a fight. Doctors treated a wound in the back and sewed it. A bump formed, the skin itched and McNeely visited doctors again and again. They said an injured nerve caused the pain, but did not design a radiograph.
McNeely then entered the prison, and every time the guards searched him with metal detectors for weapons, the devices sounded the alarm. One day he scratched his back and it sounded like metal.
The rash was his girlfriend. She saw the mold under the skin surface and said, "There's a knife in your back, Billy." A surgeon soon removed a seven-centimeter-long blade from the Canadian's body.
Woman dies because doctors think she is dead
In 2013, a 72-year-old woman suffered serious injuries. She had a traffic accident at Itzehoe. The doctors present diagnosed the death.
The mortician later did not marvel badly because when he opened the body bag, the affected breathed. In the evening she died of her head injuries.
With immediate treatment she would probably have survived.
Death after tonsillitis
Marijke was hospitalized in 2006 to remove her tonsils, a simple operation. But after that, the doctors injected oxygen incorrectly, her belly ballooned, and the girl's legs turned blue.
The doctors did an emergency operation to get the air out of the abdomen and took Marijke's appendix out without having any discomfort with it.
The girl spit blood after the operation, and blood came out of the cut on the abdomen, which ran from the chest to the pubic bone.
At 10 pm she came to another clinic where she was thoroughly examined. The doctors found that she had severe lung and liver damage. It also had a hole in the stomach, which the doctors who were doing the emergency surgery had missed.
The doctors in the second hospital closed the hole in the stomach in another operation. In the process, Marijke fell into a coma and did not wake up. On 29.11. In 2006 she died at the age of 14.
The anesthetist of the first clinic received an ad for negligent homicide. The case is closed.
In the case of "sexy Cora" the anesthetist received a sentence of 14 months on probation for negligent homicide. (Image: Dan Race / fotolia.com) Cardiac arrest at beauty surgery
Carolin Wosnitza became known as "Sexy Cora" in porn films. She had already done some cosmetic surgery when she wanted to have her breast enlarged.
During the operation she was not sufficiently ventilated. The heart stopped, and the young woman died. The warning tone of the device was switched off.
The anesthetist received a suspended sentence of 14 months for negligent homicide. Wosnitza's pimp and widower received in April 2016 compensation of almost 500,000 euros.
The wrong leg amputated
Doctors in a hospital in Austria amputated the wrong leg in 2010 to a 91-year-old woman. They noticed her mistake and also amputated her second leg.
The hospital dismissed the responsible doctor.
Misdiagnosis of malicious intent
A Dutch doctor diagnosed serious illnesses such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's or dementia in about 200 people, although tests did not confirm the diagnosis.
The judges ruled that he "deliberately and deliberately" made false diagnoses. In 2014, the fraudster received three years in prison without parole.
What can patients do?
Healers often misdiagnose false blindness: A neurologist will first look for nerve dysfunction in headaches, an expert in psychosomatic illnesses for mental health issues, a physiotherapist may suspect tense neck muscles.
Patients are well advised to inform themselves, for example via internet portals, and should always ask their doctor which illnesses are still in question.
Those who suffer from certain symptoms can create a diary in which he or she describes in detail what happens and also notes what which doctor said.
Patients should contact their health insurance if they suspect a treatment error. (Image: Focus Pocus LTD / fotolia.com) In case of suspected treatment errors, affected persons can inform the health insurance company. If the health fund considers the claim to be justified, it will submit the matter to an expert of the Medical Service of the Health Insurance (MDK). He then estimates whether there could be a treatment error or if there were complications that are not the responsibility of the doctor.
In case of justified suspicion, the MDK prepares a scientific report, so that those concerned can either reach an out-of-court settlement or obtain a lawsuit. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Specialist supervision: Barbara Schindewolf-Lensch (doctor)