When I represented hospitals, my boss used to stress bedside manner as the most effective risk management. It’s been forty years and the industry is still trying to figure out a way to make that stick. Healthcare is fully embracing the concept of consumerism, and with that comes the need for consumer and patient satisfaction—and […]
Ever felt alone in a crowd? How about alone in a crowded emergency room surrounded by professionals who could help but choose to ignore you? These things happen. Here is the link: ‘I delivered my baby scared and alone.’: Mom raises awareness about hospital malpractice after traumatic birth
And the results are not surprising. Misdiagnosis, prescribing errors, and wrongful death make up most of the claims. When I worked in defense of hospitals, nurses were the hardest witnesses to prepare. They are left alone too long and forced to do things they wouldn’t normally if they’d been under the direct supervision of a […]
Staffing shortages are everywhere but largely not considered in individual cases when reviewing medical records. This is because the names of nurses and techs may appear throughout a medical record but without seeing the rest of the shift and treatment records of other patients, it is difficult to put the names into context. This is […]
I worked with a critical care doctor at a teaching facility who told me this: “Listen, Thompson, Don’t forget this. They want candy stripers practicing medicine.” That was 1992. He meant that hospital systems were leaning on the nurses to expand their traditional roles to maximize profit. Meanwhile, lawyers are citing cases from a century […]
Last week, a story on electronic health records ended up in this blog – reminding me of a 2018 post I made here concerning the increasingly deleterious effect on the accuracy of medical records caused by technology and user laziness or deception that it can promote. The 2018 post about changes in medical record-keeping can […]
