Were you a victim of surgical error?

On Behalf of | Sep 20, 2018 | Uncategorized

Do you know that more than 250,000 people die every year because of one particular issue? It is the third leading cause for death in the United States at this time. Surgical errors cost people their lives in New Mexico hospitals and numerous other medical facilities throughout the nation. When such injuries occur, and patients later learn that someone could have prevented their suffering, they often become understandably angry and frustrated.  

If you have an upcoming surgery scheduled, you may want to take a look at surgical error data, so you know more about the risks involved. Knowing that no surgeon is perfect is one thing but having to worry that a preventable mistake might cause you a serious injury that may affect the rest of your life (or even put your life itself at risk) is quite another. If a surgeon makes an error and you are the one who suffers, you have every right to seek justice.  

Lack of standard care part of the problem 

Perhaps you’re having surgery to help treat a particular health condition. Then again, maybe your surgery is elective, and you are choosing to have it done. Either way, you should be able to reasonably expect that your surgeon and other medical staff members will fulfill their fiduciary duties to keep you safe. The following list shows that that’s not always how things go in the operating room, as these errors often cause fatalities and other injuries: 

  • Unlike flight attendants, who have set protocol as to how they interact with plane passengers, how they move throughout a flight and other behavior standards that guide them through their duties, surgeons have no such thing to govern their behavior in the operating room. 
  • Medical negligence — in particular, surgical errors — is the third leading cause of death in the nation. From nurses giving patients the wrong drugs, to giving the right drugs to the wrong person, one mistake can have devastating results. 
  • Sadly, many medical patients die because of the care they received in the operating room and not because of the adverse health conditions that prompted their surgeries to start. 
  • The Institute of Medicine published a report stating that surgical errors and other preventable medical negligence has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. 
  • The last thing you need to worry about is going to a hospital for surgery and winding up in a worse condition that you initially were suffering.  

Some surgeries are quite risky, but your surgeon should discuss all the potential dangers with you ahead of time. If you are not properly informed, you are unable to make informed decisions regarding whether the risks are worth going through with the operation. When you have a non-life-threatening condition, it may come down to personal choice. If something goes wrong, you can definitely tap into local support resources to seek legal accountability against any and all responsible parties.

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