Nursing Negligence Almost Killed Famous Actor Dennis Quaid’s Twin Children
On November 18, 2013, famous actor Dennis Quaid and his wife Kimberley Quaid welcomed their twins into the world via surrogacy at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Unfortunately, the twins were premature and had to stay in the hospital for treatment because they had both acquired staph infections.
Quaid called the hospital around 21:00 that night to check after the twins. The nurse who took the call told him that “they’re just fine.” What Quaid didn’t know was that nurses had noticed blood oozing from the intravenous site on the arm of one of the twins and a spot on her heel. It turns out that the nurses had mistakenly given the twins 1,000 times the recommended dose of the blood thinner heparin but hadn’t told Quaid of that when he called. Hospital staff scrambled to reverse the effects of the heparin throughout the night but still failed to notify Quaid or his wife of the situation.
What is Failure to Diagnose?
Failure to diagnose is a kind of diagnostic error that is caused by your doctor being negligent in treating you. If your doctor doesn’t take the necessary steps to determine what illness you have, then you are at risk of sustaining an injury or disability; in fact, some people have even lost their lives due to a doctor’s failure to diagnose. Ultimately, failure to diagnose leads to you receiving delayed or incorrect treatment, or no treatment at all.
Anesthesiologists and Anesthesia Errors
In 2015, Medscape wrote a medical malpractice report regarding the major reasons why anesthesiologists get sued. Unfortunately, anesthesia errors are a common feature in medical malpractice, and they can also be the most deadly. In fact, most anesthesiologists will face a lawsuit during their career.
When asked what the nature of their medical malpractice lawsuits entailed, anesthesiologists revealed that they occurred for the following reasons:
Medical Devices and Birth Injuries
When people think of medical malpractice, they often only think about the doctors involved and the level of human error that they display. However, there are plenty of occasions whereby medical malpractice is caused by defective medical products and devices. Sadly, these can cause significant injury to you and/or your child during birth which isn’t always reversible.
Medical Error Leads to Toxic Kidney Transplant
In 2013, a man from Maryland died after contracting rabies from an infected kidney that he received as a transplant in 2011. This is only the second time that rabies has been transmitted through a donated organ in the US. Rabies is extremely rare in the US – causing only 1 to 3 deaths a year. Additionally, signs and symptoms of rabies usually appear within a month or two after initial infection, so the fact that the man’s symptoms appeared over a year after his transplant was something that steered doctors away from a rabies diagnosis.
According to reports, the kidney donor, a 20-year-old Air Force airman, died of encephalitis, however, doctors could find no reason for this. In fact, they believed he may have been poisoned, so they did a full medical work-up and tested for everything they could think of in order to try and determine the cause of his encephalitis. They didn’t think to check for rabies and declared his organs and tissues safe for transplantation – a major medical error on their part.
Famous Actress Never Sings Again Due to Medical Malpractice
Actress Julie Andrews is a well-known and well-loved star in Hollywood. Made famous from leading roles in movies such as “Mary Poppins” and “The Sound of Music,” Julie Andrews had a gifted singing voice which was her pride and joy. Sadly, an unfortunate case of medical malpractice in 1997 caused her to lose her singing voice and resulted in a medical malpractice lawsuit.
After consulting with two doctors at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital due to discomfort whilst singing, Julie Andrews found out that she had noncancerous nodules on her vocal cords. Whilst these nodules can generally be treated without surgery, Julie Andrews opted to have a throat operation in 1997 to resolve the issue. Unfortunately, the operation was botched, and she was left with hoarseness and permanent vocal cord damage. She could no longer sing on a professional level – something which had been the foundation upon which her livelihood and fame were built.
Nursing Negligence Leads to Cancer Patients Getting Rare Blood Infection
In the summer of 2018, six patients at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York, developed a rare infection after they received injectable opioids diluted with tap water. This resulted in the patients developing bloodstream infections with Sphingomonas paucimobilis.
Thankfully, all of the patients were treated with antibiotics and no deaths resulted from the infections, though some patients later died from causes related to their cancer. However, the question still remained: how did a bacterium, which naturally lives in soil and water, find its way into the bloodstreams of these patients?
How to Distinguish Between Medical Malpractice and Wrongful Death
Wrongful death and medical malpractice are two terms that confuse many people. They’re very closely linked, with the key distinguishing feature being that as a result of a medical practitioner’s negligence, you or a family member dies a premature death. Examples of types of medical malpractice that lead to wrongful death include:
Pregnant Woman Has CT Scan After Doctor Error
In 2008, the Banner Thunderbird Medical Center in Glendale, AZ, experienced a “never event” due to a doctor error that prompted a medical malpractice lawsuit.
Kerry Higuera was three months pregnant when she erroneously underwent a CT scan meant for another patient. She went to the hospital’s ER after experiencing bleeding and was surprised when a nurse came to the waiting room and told her that her doctor wanted a CT scan to be done. Kerry states that she questioned the decision, but the nurse reiterated that the doctor wanted an abdominal and pelvic CT scan conducted.
Nursing Negligence and Dementia
A startling trend of nursing home neglect has begun to emerge in recent years. Even worse, cases of nursing home neglect have been shown to be treated far less severely than the neglect of children and even that of animals. It has been revealed that the number of nursing home deaths and injuries caused by neglect or abuse is severely underreported.
Some of the harrowing statistics of nursing home neglect include: