CHICAGO MEDICAL MALPRACTICE ATTORNEY IDENTIFIES REASONS DOCTORS FAIL TO DIAGNOSE INJURIES
Unfortunately, medical treaters may fail to diagnose a patient’s injuries after an injury-producing event. A patient involved in a major trauma is very likely to have multiple serious injuries. For example, an individual involved in a car crash or a construction site fall may have internal injuries in addition to obvious injuries, such as, broken bones or lacerations. The doctors treating the patient may properly focus on the obvious injuries, but fail to investigate any additional injuries or unforeseen conditions. This failure to diagnose may occur because of a failure to consider differential diagnoses, failure to order proper tests, a language barrier between patient and healthcare provider or the failure to otherwise consider additional injuries when there is a major trauma.
One cause of failure to diagnose injuries in a trauma situation is failure to determine that the injury is present. Injuries are often not visible to the naked eye. In many medical facilities throughout the world, trauma victims are assessed through the use of surveys developed by the American College of Trauma Surgeons in the Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) course. The primary survey identifies immediately life-threatening problems. Once those problems are treated, medical treaters use the secondary survey to conduct a detailed examination of the patient results in a complete catalog of their injuries.
According to some researchers, this system does not always work in practice. “It is not uncommon for the secondary survey to be curtailed or hindered by other priorities, with the result that complete catalogue of injuries is not identified at presentation.” Missed injury and the tertiary trauma survey, Volume 39, Issue 1, Pages 107-114 C. Thomson, I. Greaves. The tertiary trauma survey, in which formal repeated examination of the patient is undertaken has been suggested as a better alternative to identify injuries not readily identifiable at the initial presentation.
Another cause of failure to diagnose an injury is due to a language barrier. I recently wrote an article about the importance of effective communication between patients and health care providers. Certainly, language barriers can prevent a clear communication between a patient and medical treater. It is a hospital’s duty to provide a translator and under federal law, hospitals are required to do so if they receive federal funding.
Extra steps may be necessary to ensure that trauma patients are properly treated, but improved outcome and prevention of long-term disability or death is worth it.
