Tragic mistake: “Surgeons removed the patient’s healthy kidney last week, believing it had a cancerous tumor. But the crucial error happened several weeks earlier when the kidney on the wrong side was identified on the patient’s medical charts as potentially cancerous.”
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Brutal — with all of the checks we’re supposed to do now you’d think this would be an unlikely scenario.
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“Tragic mistake?”
Why do you soften every instance of real negligence with devastating outcome, in this way?
How about “malpractice”.
This kind of error is born from negligence and failure to meet any acceptable standard of care.
Shouldn’t physicians come down hard on practicioners who practice medicine so sloppily they actively destroy instead of preserve or restore health?
Why soft pedal this as a sad situtation that could hardly be helped?
Hopefully there’ll be some follow-up reporting on how this happened.
Was it labeled wrong throughout the medical record? Weren’t there any diagnostic CT scans? Did the patient and family know which was the diseased kidney? (If they didn’t, it would certainly raise some issues about informed consent, regardless of the outcome.)
What a train wreck.
Apparently the hospital where this occurred is considered a leader in patient safety. Let this be a wakeup call to every institution that thinks it won’t happen to them.
“Why soft pedal this as a sad situtation that could hardly be helped?”
Because it doesn’t fit Kevin’s political agenda. Or that of most physicians.
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