Albuquerque Medical Malpractice Law Blog

Some people who have surgery won't ever be admitted into a hospital to have the procedure. This is because many of them will go to surgery centers that are freestanding clinics instead of the hospital. While these centers do serve an important purpose, they aren't without risk to the patients.

One of the primary issues with surgery centers is that they don't have the life-saving equipment that a hospital has. In many areas, the centers have to have a partnership with a hospital so that a patient who has an emergency at the clinic can be cared for at a local hospital. Even this isn't an ideal situation because of the response time when you call 911 and the time it takes to get the patient over to the hospital.

Patients who are receiving any type of medication are at risk of errors that can harm them. There must be protocols in place that help prevent these from occurring. This is often a difficult task because of the many steps that it takes to get patients medications, especially in a hospital setting.

There are some common ways that these facilities can help to keep patients safe from medication errors. Using more than one method can boost the effectiveness of the strategy. Here are a few common protocols that are used:

• Comprehensive documentation is important. Everything that has to do with prescribing, filling and administering medication should be put into the patient's record.
• Repeat the prescription to the person who prescribed it. You should also read the order aloud when you are doing anything with the medications.
• Use decimal points with a preceding number, even a 0, to help keep the dosage straight. This can help differentiate dosage errors. For example. 0.50mg is much easier to read than .50mg.
• Medications must be reconciled. When the pharmacy delivers a medication, it should be checked against the prescription. It will be checked again when it is administered.
• Name alerts can help to prevent name mix ups. Ensuring that the patient is the one for whom it was prescribed is one of the five rights of medication administration. For example, Mr. Herbert shouldn't get medications for Mr. Hebert. The similar names might lead to confusion.
• The five rights of medication administration must be followed. It must be timed correctly, given via the correct method, have the correct dosage, be the correct medication, and be given to the intended patient.

In order to "go under the knife," you have to have a certain degree of trust in the surgeon who will be cutting into your body. You trust that your life is in good hands, and that the surgeon will keep your best interests in mind during the operation.

You understand that every procedure comes with certain risks, but you trust that your surgeon isn't one of them. You sign the paperwork, go through all of the preoperative steps and then put your health, well-being and life into the hands of your surgeon with the confidence that you come out of the surgery without complications and on the road to recovery.

Hospital negligence is never acceptable. There isn't any good reason why a person who seeks care in the hospital should be harmed due to factors like understaffing. When patients are harmed in these cases, those patients have a legal avenue to explore.

Making a case for hospital negligence isn't always easy, but it usually isn't impossible. When we work with you on a case, we look into the specific points of your case so that we can discern what points we need to focus on. From there, we can look into matters like broken protocol or substandard care. All of this will come together to make the case for you.