An African villager arrives home after a trip through the jungle, nursing an animal bite. A few days later, we see the same man, sweating and feverish, submitting himself to the care of local doctors. Gradually, the circle widens: the man’s wife, his friends, the doctors themselves, all start to display symptoms. Cut to an international departure lounge, where a Western businessman or holidaymaker is knocking back paracetamol, sure that this nagging flu will have cleared up by the time he gets home.
The fear of pandemics is one that haunts our culture – and it is one that has been given new life by the events in West Africa, where the Ebola virus has claimed almost 4,000 lives. In keeping with the horror-movie narrative, the disease is starting to creep out of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, with cases reported in Spain and America. Yesterday saw the death of the first suspected British victim, in Macedonia, and the announcement by the Government that it is tightening screening procedures at airports. On Wednesday, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Thomas Frieden, warned that Ebola may become “the next Aids” – a killer not of thousands, but of millions.
Yet those who have seen this movie before may also feel they know how it ends. When SARS – severe acute respiratory syndrome – appeared in Asia in 2002, we were told that it had a 25 per cent chance of killing “tens of millions”. There were calls for borders to be locked down, and new arrivals showing symptoms to be locked up. But despite a spike in sales of surgical masks, and the hurried cancellation of thousands of holidays to Hong Kong and Thailand, the disease ended up killing only 775 people worldwide.
It was a similar story in 2009 with swine flu. The chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, warned that 65,000 Britons could die, and the government duly spent more than £1.2 billion to prepare for the viral apocalypse. Yet while the disease was incredibly contagious, infecting millions worldwide, it turned out to be relatively mild. In Britain, only 457 people died – a significant number, but 25 times fewer than the 12,000 who are carried away by normal seasonal flu every year. To make matters worse, some experts later claimed that the £424 million spent on stockpiling 40 million doses of Tamiflu had essentially been wasted: its average effect, they said, was to shorten the disease’s duration from seven days to 6.3 (a finding which its manufacturer, Roche, disputed).
With the Ebola virus, too, there are reasons to believe that the impact in Britain will be relatively limited – which is why, to its credit, the Government appears to be resisting calls to panic. True, the virus is not only horrifically nasty, liquefying the internal organs of those who catch it, but devastatingly effective.
This article is courtesy of the Telegraph.
Regularly updated blog featuring news, articles and information relating to clinical/medical negligence.
Friday, 17 October 2014
Wednesday, 15 October 2014
You won't believe these medical errors
Studies have suggested that medical errors may be the third-leading cause of death in the United States, right behind heart disease and cancer.
For the past eight years in an effort to curb the number of preventable mistakes that happen in Indiana, hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, abortion clinics and birthing centers have been required to report 28 serious adverse events to the Indiana State Department of Health.
In 2013, 111 medical errors occurred at 293 facilities, according to a report recently released by state health officials. That's more medical errors than have occurred in any year since the state started requiring facilities to report these events.
As in seven of the eight years that the report has been produced, serious bed sores lead this year's list of preventable medical errors, with 45 such incidents...
Bedsores
Once again, so-called pressure ulcers, acquired after a person is admitted, topped the list. An average of 32 stage three or four sores have occurred each year.
In 2013, 45 incidents of serious bedsores were reported, more than in any other year since the report was first published.
The elderly and others who are confined to bed because of illness are particularly prone to bedsores. So facilities are supposed to keep a watchful eye on their patients to ensure that small problems don't get out of hand and potentially lead to lethal infections.
Foreign objects
In some cases, surgeons are supposed to take things out of one's body. In others, they're supposed to put things in (think stents for clogged arteries). But on 27 occasions, surgeons in Indiana left a "foreign object" in a patient after surgery.
The Indiana State Department of Health does not require facilities to go into detail on their reports, so it's impossible to know exactly what those foreign objects were.
NoThing Left Behind, a national project to reduce the number of "retained surgical items" notes that common objects left behind include soft goods/sponges, needles, instruments and "miscellaneous small items."
Although one incident occurred in the previous year and was just reported now, the total is more than a 50 percent increase from the number of such events reported for 2012.
Wrong site surgeries
You've heard stories about doctors removing the wrong leg, operating on the opposite arm. Some patients have even taken to marking the right body part before they go under the knife.
Still, mistakes happen. On 13 occasions in the past year, an Indiana hospital performed surgery on the wrong body part, and in five cases, the fault was that of an ambulatory surgery center, for a total of 18 such incidents.
It should be noted that even if a surgeon stops before actually doing the full surgery, it counts under this category. So that could mean anything from a doctor numbing the wrong leg and then realizing his or her mistake before proceeding to actually operating on that leg.
In two other cases, the wrong surgical procedure was done.
Serious falls
It seems so mundane, but fall prevention is a critical piece of what hospitals must do to keep patients as healthy as possible. On 12 occasions, all in hospitals, a patient's fall resulted in either death or a serious disability.
Each year, an estimated 700,000 to 1 million patients fall in hospitals. Of these, as many as half result in an injury.
To encourage hospitals to work harder to prevent falls, the federal government in 2008 started refusing to pay for extra care necessitated by a fall while a patient was hospitalized.
This article is courtesy of indystar.com.
For the past eight years in an effort to curb the number of preventable mistakes that happen in Indiana, hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, abortion clinics and birthing centers have been required to report 28 serious adverse events to the Indiana State Department of Health.
In 2013, 111 medical errors occurred at 293 facilities, according to a report recently released by state health officials. That's more medical errors than have occurred in any year since the state started requiring facilities to report these events.
As in seven of the eight years that the report has been produced, serious bed sores lead this year's list of preventable medical errors, with 45 such incidents...
Bedsores
Once again, so-called pressure ulcers, acquired after a person is admitted, topped the list. An average of 32 stage three or four sores have occurred each year.
In 2013, 45 incidents of serious bedsores were reported, more than in any other year since the report was first published.
The elderly and others who are confined to bed because of illness are particularly prone to bedsores. So facilities are supposed to keep a watchful eye on their patients to ensure that small problems don't get out of hand and potentially lead to lethal infections.
Foreign objects
In some cases, surgeons are supposed to take things out of one's body. In others, they're supposed to put things in (think stents for clogged arteries). But on 27 occasions, surgeons in Indiana left a "foreign object" in a patient after surgery.
The Indiana State Department of Health does not require facilities to go into detail on their reports, so it's impossible to know exactly what those foreign objects were.
NoThing Left Behind, a national project to reduce the number of "retained surgical items" notes that common objects left behind include soft goods/sponges, needles, instruments and "miscellaneous small items."
Although one incident occurred in the previous year and was just reported now, the total is more than a 50 percent increase from the number of such events reported for 2012.
Wrong site surgeries
You've heard stories about doctors removing the wrong leg, operating on the opposite arm. Some patients have even taken to marking the right body part before they go under the knife.
Still, mistakes happen. On 13 occasions in the past year, an Indiana hospital performed surgery on the wrong body part, and in five cases, the fault was that of an ambulatory surgery center, for a total of 18 such incidents.
It should be noted that even if a surgeon stops before actually doing the full surgery, it counts under this category. So that could mean anything from a doctor numbing the wrong leg and then realizing his or her mistake before proceeding to actually operating on that leg.
In two other cases, the wrong surgical procedure was done.
Serious falls
It seems so mundane, but fall prevention is a critical piece of what hospitals must do to keep patients as healthy as possible. On 12 occasions, all in hospitals, a patient's fall resulted in either death or a serious disability.
Each year, an estimated 700,000 to 1 million patients fall in hospitals. Of these, as many as half result in an injury.
To encourage hospitals to work harder to prevent falls, the federal government in 2008 started refusing to pay for extra care necessitated by a fall while a patient was hospitalized.
This article is courtesy of indystar.com.
Monday, 13 October 2014
Family could receive up to £6.5 million compensation after baby was born with brain damage at Yorkshire Hospital
The trust which runs Grimsby's hospital has agreed to pay compensation which could eventually amount to £6.5 million after admitting that mistakes caused a baby to be born with brain damage.
The money was awarded to Cody Lyster-Hughes, formerly of Louth, after an eight-and-a-half year legal battle.
Cody’s mother Caroline Lyster was admitted to Diana Princess of Wales Hospital, Grimsby in April 2005 with an infection when she was seven-and-a-half months pregnant. She was treated with antibiotics and steroids but was discharged from hospital and sent home, before a pathology report was produced.
In fact tests showed that she had e-coli. By the time she was re-admitted to hospital four days later the infection had already passed to the foetus. She gave birth seven weeks premature and Cody was delivered with brain damage.
Wendy Booth, director of performance assurance across Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The Trust is pleased that agreement has been reached with the parents of Cody Lyster-Hughes in respect of his claim arising from the antenatal management which led to premature labour and Cody’s cerebral palsy.
“An apology has been provided and a settlement agreed which will be used to secure Cody’s future and provide him with the care and therapies he requires.
“The Trust regrets the lapse in standards which led to Cody suffering this injury and wishes Cody and his family well for the future.”
This article is courtesy of the Grimsby Telegraph.
The money was awarded to Cody Lyster-Hughes, formerly of Louth, after an eight-and-a-half year legal battle.
Cody’s mother Caroline Lyster was admitted to Diana Princess of Wales Hospital, Grimsby in April 2005 with an infection when she was seven-and-a-half months pregnant. She was treated with antibiotics and steroids but was discharged from hospital and sent home, before a pathology report was produced.
In fact tests showed that she had e-coli. By the time she was re-admitted to hospital four days later the infection had already passed to the foetus. She gave birth seven weeks premature and Cody was delivered with brain damage.
Wendy Booth, director of performance assurance across Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The Trust is pleased that agreement has been reached with the parents of Cody Lyster-Hughes in respect of his claim arising from the antenatal management which led to premature labour and Cody’s cerebral palsy.
“An apology has been provided and a settlement agreed which will be used to secure Cody’s future and provide him with the care and therapies he requires.
“The Trust regrets the lapse in standards which led to Cody suffering this injury and wishes Cody and his family well for the future.”
This article is courtesy of the Grimsby Telegraph.
Friday, 10 October 2014
Woman loses schizophrenia misdiagnosis claim
A 46-year-old woman’s damages action over allegedly having been misdiagnosed with schizophrenia, after she complained of being sexually abused by a sibling, has been dismissed.
High Court President Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns found that the claim by the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, is statute-barred.
She claimed she spent 11 years in a 13-year span effectively locked up at a Dublin psychiatric hospital following an alleged misdiagnosis by a doctor attached to the facility. The woman was first admitted in the early 1980s, when she was in her mid-teens.
Mr Justice Kearns heard that while she was an in-patient at the facility, she claimed to have been sexually abused by a male trainee nurse and a religious brother she had grown to trust. That abuse was the subject of separate legal proceedings.
In the 1990s, the woman had come under the care of another doctor who told her she did not suffer from any mental illness. Arising out of the alleged misdiagnosis, she brought a negligence claim, seeking damages, against the hospital and the doctor.
The claims were denied and, in a pre-trial motion, the defendants argued her claim should be struck out because it was statute-barred. She had first known about the alleged misdiagnosis in the late 1990s, a solicitor instructed in 2002, but had not initiated her claim until 2009 — which the defendants said was outside the statutory-allowed time period of three years.
Mr Justice Kearns, in a written judgment, said that with great regret he was dismissing the woman’s case after finding it was statute-barred.
He said she was an honest and entirely reliable witness and had shown herself to be a remarkably resilient individual.
In her evidence, the woman claimed that from a young age she had been sexually abused on a continuous basis by an older brother. Judge Kearns said that, in her mid-teens, she reported the abuse to a neighbour but had not been believed. As a result, she attempted to take her own life and had been admitted to hospital.
She had eventually been taken to the psychiatric hospital where she met with the doctor who, she alleged, misdiagnosed her condition.
This article is courtesy of the Irish Examiner.
High Court President Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns found that the claim by the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, is statute-barred.
She claimed she spent 11 years in a 13-year span effectively locked up at a Dublin psychiatric hospital following an alleged misdiagnosis by a doctor attached to the facility. The woman was first admitted in the early 1980s, when she was in her mid-teens.
Mr Justice Kearns heard that while she was an in-patient at the facility, she claimed to have been sexually abused by a male trainee nurse and a religious brother she had grown to trust. That abuse was the subject of separate legal proceedings.
In the 1990s, the woman had come under the care of another doctor who told her she did not suffer from any mental illness. Arising out of the alleged misdiagnosis, she brought a negligence claim, seeking damages, against the hospital and the doctor.
The claims were denied and, in a pre-trial motion, the defendants argued her claim should be struck out because it was statute-barred. She had first known about the alleged misdiagnosis in the late 1990s, a solicitor instructed in 2002, but had not initiated her claim until 2009 — which the defendants said was outside the statutory-allowed time period of three years.
Mr Justice Kearns, in a written judgment, said that with great regret he was dismissing the woman’s case after finding it was statute-barred.
He said she was an honest and entirely reliable witness and had shown herself to be a remarkably resilient individual.
In her evidence, the woman claimed that from a young age she had been sexually abused on a continuous basis by an older brother. Judge Kearns said that, in her mid-teens, she reported the abuse to a neighbour but had not been believed. As a result, she attempted to take her own life and had been admitted to hospital.
She had eventually been taken to the psychiatric hospital where she met with the doctor who, she alleged, misdiagnosed her condition.
This article is courtesy of the Irish Examiner.
Wednesday, 8 October 2014
Seven-year-old awarded £2.25m compensation over bungle in his mother's care
A seven-year-old boy who was born too early after his mother was fitted with a contraceptive device while she was pregnant has been awarded £2.25 million damages.
Cian Bowen suffered brain damage because of his birth at 29 weeks and now has cerebral palsy although his intellect is intact.
Cian, who Mr Justice Spencer described as a “very delightful little boy”, was at London’s High Court with his parents, Stephen Bowen and Tracy Ann Hughes, for the settlement of his damages action against GP Helen Claire Jenkins.
The family’s counsel, Martin Spencer QC, said that the case arose from the admitted negligence of the doctor, who fitted Ms Hughes with an intrauterine device (IUD) or coil in March 2007, when she was already 14 weeks pregnant.
Ms Hughes suffered from bleeding and, seven weeks later, realised she was in fact pregnant, which was particularly devastating as she and her partner had regarded their family as complete.
No termination was possible at that stage and the pregnancy continued until Cian, who would not have sustained damage if he had gone to term, was born prematurely.
“He is now of course a much-loved and precious member of the family”, said counsel.
If the case had not settled but continued to trial, he added, there would have been a major dispute between the medical experts as to whether the presence of the IUD was causative of the premature labour and delivery.
It had been agreed that Ms Hughes should receive £200,000 of the damages, which are funded by the Medical Defence Union, in relation to her own personal injury claim and to compensate her and Mr Bowen for their past care.
The family, who live in Carmarthenshire, intended to pay off their mortgage and take a much-needed holiday.
The judge said he was satisfied that the settlement was in Cian’s best interests and paid tribute to the devotion and loving care shown by the family.
“I can see for myself he is a very delightful little boy - very bright and cheerful despite his difficulties.
“His parents, sisters and grandparents must be very proud of him.
“This settlement will bring the family the peace of mind they have been seeking and I wish them well. There will be more challenges, I’m sure, but now they have financial security.”
This article is courtesy of Wales Online.
Cian Bowen suffered brain damage because of his birth at 29 weeks and now has cerebral palsy although his intellect is intact.
Cian, who Mr Justice Spencer described as a “very delightful little boy”, was at London’s High Court with his parents, Stephen Bowen and Tracy Ann Hughes, for the settlement of his damages action against GP Helen Claire Jenkins.
The family’s counsel, Martin Spencer QC, said that the case arose from the admitted negligence of the doctor, who fitted Ms Hughes with an intrauterine device (IUD) or coil in March 2007, when she was already 14 weeks pregnant.
Ms Hughes suffered from bleeding and, seven weeks later, realised she was in fact pregnant, which was particularly devastating as she and her partner had regarded their family as complete.
No termination was possible at that stage and the pregnancy continued until Cian, who would not have sustained damage if he had gone to term, was born prematurely.
“He is now of course a much-loved and precious member of the family”, said counsel.
If the case had not settled but continued to trial, he added, there would have been a major dispute between the medical experts as to whether the presence of the IUD was causative of the premature labour and delivery.
It had been agreed that Ms Hughes should receive £200,000 of the damages, which are funded by the Medical Defence Union, in relation to her own personal injury claim and to compensate her and Mr Bowen for their past care.
The family, who live in Carmarthenshire, intended to pay off their mortgage and take a much-needed holiday.
The judge said he was satisfied that the settlement was in Cian’s best interests and paid tribute to the devotion and loving care shown by the family.
“I can see for myself he is a very delightful little boy - very bright and cheerful despite his difficulties.
“His parents, sisters and grandparents must be very proud of him.
“This settlement will bring the family the peace of mind they have been seeking and I wish them well. There will be more challenges, I’m sure, but now they have financial security.”
This article is courtesy of Wales Online.
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