Stress and errors are particularly common in hospital emergency rooms, which can often be chaotic and overcrowded. Staff may be working long hours and be sleep deprived, and they are under tremendous pressure as they rush about dealing with seriously ill and injured patients. According to The Wall Street Journal, a large percentage of medical errors in hospitals occur because of mistakes in the emergency room, with 37% to 55% of malpractice suits attributable to resulting diagnostic errors.
Factors That Create Stress and Chaos
The American Journal study identified 12 potential stress factors based on existing research and initial interviews with hospital staff.
- Interruptions or disturbances to work
- Inadequately equipped to carry out one or more required tasks
- Not enough time to finish a job
- Internal cooperation problems between colleagues/managers/other professionals within a department
- External cooperation problems with staff in another department
- Exposure to violence or threats of violence
- Emotionally demanding patients
- Criticism or verbal attacks
- Too busy to resolve work tasks properly
- Too few opportunities to plan work tasks
- Lack of support from colleagues or other professionals
- Too much noise prevents concentration.
In addition, some medical practices produce stress factors that harm the emotional and professional health of those who work there. These facilities may have poor organization, tyrannical or impotent leadership, and demoralizing attitudes that create conflict. Stress heightens turnover, undermines morale, reduces cooperative behavior, diminishes productivity and increases the risk of errors and substandard care.
Common Mistakes
When mistakes are made in chaotic medical facilities, the results can be serious and devastating, especially in emergency situations. “Mistakes” can be negligence or incompetence. For example, if a doctor or emergency room staff fails to recognize the symptoms of a heart attack or stroke or misdiagnoses cancer and misses the chance to treat it early, patients may die.
Major errors that harm patients include:
- Failure to identify symptoms of an emergency condition such as a heart attack or stroke
- Failure to treat an infection that rapidly gets worse. Infection cases are a challenge to bring. The occurrence of infection is frequently blamed on something other than the medical care. Pennsylvania has passed a specific law dealing with infection control and has established benchmarks for hospitals.
- Failure to communicate with staff or with the patient to obtain necessary information such as patient allergies, diagnosis and co-morbid conditions
- Sending a patient home with an unresolved problem
- Using medications without complete knowledge of the medication, prescribing the wrong medication, or failing to double check high-alert medications before dispensing or administering.
Is it Malpractice?
Due to the high volume of patients, and frequently the sloppy care provided, the emergency room is among the top hospital departments responsible for malpractice.
Medical professionals and facilities are held to a standard of care. They have a duty to patients to use their training and tools, like MRIs, CT Scans, blood tests, EKGs and other tests, to make the proper diagnosis and to begin treatment in a timely manner. If they do not, and what would have been a treatable condition becomes untreatable and leads to serious harm or death, patients may have a valid negligence claim. Pennsylvania law calls these "loss of chance" cases, since the doctor's malpractice caused the patient to lose the chance to avoid a bad outcome.
However, not every problem that occurs can be considered medical negligence. For example, if the results of the mistake were not serious, or the disease may have been too advanced for available treatment to have made a difference, patients would not have a claim.
Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
Pennsylvania has a statute of limitations for medical malpractice lawsuits that says that an injured patient must file their claim within two years of the date on which the provider committed the alleged medical malpractice or from the time the patient knows or, in the exercise of reasonable diligence, should have known of the relationship between the medical treatment and the harm. This is a very complex area of the law. There are many cases specifically addressing statute of limitations. Pennsylvania also has a statute of repose. The statute of repose bars a suit more than seven (7) years from that date, except for when a foreign object is left in the patient. Further, Pennsylvania also has a Minor’s Tolling Act.
To win a lawsuit or obtain a settlement, it must be shown that the duty of care was breached because of the negligent actions or inactions of the medical professionals or facility, and that this breach caused the injury or death.
