Comments on: WhiteCoat: Never say never

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:35:00 +0000

Maybe smoking should be a never event and insurance companies could refuse to pay for any smoking related disease. Doctors and hospitals could also refuse to treat anyone who smokes.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:33:00 +0000

Last February I was speaking to a nurse who told me her ER had over 20 holds (its a ten bed ER). The hospital was full with patients in the halls. She had been working 12-16 hour shifts everyday as had everyone else. They tried diverting patients but every hospital was the same. The elective surgery schedule was canceled and ambulatory surgery turned into an inpatient unit. It was Flu season. Hopefully no one got a decubiti while lying days on a stretcher in the emergency room.

By: EthnicRedneck

EthnicRedneck — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:07:00 +0000

Accountants practice medicine about as convincingly as doctors teach calligraphy.

By: Dr. Incognito

Dr. Incognito — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:06:00 +0000

WhiteCoat,
This post has been recognized on redscrubs.com's Honorable Mention list.

Nice job!
Sincerely,
Dr. Incognito

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:10:00 +0000

there are a lot of lawyers who get the degree but don’t work.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:11:00 +0000

“First, Doctors are not one the higgest paid professions. I wonder how family practice docs pay off their student loans!”

Actually, they are not “one of”, they are THE highest paid profession according to the US Dept. of Labor

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:35:00 +0000

Or, more to the point, pressure ulcers are not necessarily preventable.

Reichel's Care of the Elderly 5th edition. Chapter 41 "Pressure Ulcers":

"Although the development of a pressure sore in a high-risk patient is not necessarily associated with poor care, this is often assumed to be the case. There are more than 17,000 lawsuits a year related to pressure ulcers, with settlements as high as $4 million".

"Although much is yet to be known about the prevention and treatment of [pressure ulcers], we do not know enough to prevent or heal the majority of pressure ulcers."

By: dr. bean

dr. bean — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:14:00 +0000

The point is some of these “never events” are not 100% preventable or even close. How anyone, medical or non-medical could think that wrong-site surgeries and decubitus ulcers are in the same category is beyond me. So it seems disingenuous to say the least. Find some other way to reduce bedsores than by lying and saying that they are always due to malpractice.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:06:00 +0000

Anonymous 7:48 PM claiming to be an engineer.

Let's try again. Decubitus ulcers (bedsores) are not preventable events. Decubitus ulcers are skin failure, like renal failure, pulmonary failure, heart failure.

Decubitus ulcers can happen despite the best possible care. Christopher Reeve is the best example. Complications of decubitus ulcers lead to his death.

Yes, engineers do not get paid for failure or error. They also have the ability to turn away work where the risk of failure is unacceptably high.

You are seeing fewer and fewer medical students going into geriatrics. Unrealistic expectations on the part of families is one major reason doctors stay away from the field.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:01:00 +0000

the whole idea behind health insurance is to spread the cost over multiple people so that one person who is healthy pays more than he costs and one person who is sick pays less. Just like Taxes.

So the idea is you shouldn’t make money on everyone.