MEDICAL MALPRACTICE IN THE NEWS
Two headlines pertaining to medical malpractice caught my eye over the past few weeks: (1) Hung-over surgeons more error-prone; and (2) Surgeon operates on the wrong eye of Vancouver boy.
The first article, which appeared in Reuters, discussed a new study that showed surgeons and students who performed simulated surgeries after a night of drinking alcohol were more likely to commit surgical errors.
How much a doctor drinks the day before operating is not regulated. (Yet, Federal Aviation Regulation 14 CFR 91.17 prohibits pilots or anyone acting as a crew member on a civil aircraft from consuming alcohol 8 hours prior to flying an aircraft). In the reported study, the participants performed surgery on a virtual reality system, not real people thankfully. The results:
At 9 AM, hung-over students made about 19 errors on average, while those who hadn't been drinking made only eight. This difference hadn't been seen before the night out, and faded over the day.The surgeons also performed worse the day after their night out compared with before, with an increase in errors of about half. Yet only one of them had detectable blood alcohol levels.
The second disturbing article involved a 4-year-old Vancouver boy, whose eye surgeon incorrectly operated on the boy’s left eye, when she should have operated on the boy’s right eye. According to the boy’s parents, the surgeon “said, ‘frankly, I lost sense of direction and didn’t realize I had operated on the wrong eye until I was done operating on the eye.’”
In Illinois, the law currently holds health care providers accountable for injured parties’ medical costs, loss of income and non-economic losses, such as pain and suffering, disability and disfigurement. As Chicago medical malpractice attorneys, the Law Offices of Jeffrey J. Kroll has won multiple million-dollar settlements and verdicts on behalf of our clients in medical malpractice suits.
