What is an Emergency Room Error?
Emergency room errors are a form of medical malpractice in which medical or healthcare professionals make mistakes in ER or urgent care settings that result in serious injuries or deaths. Anyone involved in the emergency care process, including doctors, nurses, paramedics, technicians, pharmacists, and others, can act negligently.
An article in the National Library of Medicine discussing medical errors states, “High error rates with serious consequences are most likely to occur in intensive care units, operating rooms, and emergency departments.”
The authors also noted:
A study by Sklar, D.P., et al., addressing unanticipated deaths occurring within seven days after emergency department discharge made several observations. There were 30 deaths per 100,000 discharges, half of which were unexpected but related to the ED visit, and 60% of which involved a possible error. Unfortunately, busy and chaotic emergency rooms provide various opportunities for careless and negligent mistakes to occur.
Emergency Room Mistakes
The National Library of Medicine article states that medical “errors are often caused by faulty systems, processes, and conditions that lead people to make mistakes or fail to prevent them… Of course, individuals should still be held accountable when an error can be attributed to them.”
Some of the most common emergency room errors that can potentially harm patients include:
- Triage errors occur when staff fail to prioritize patients with immediate and life-threatening conditions
- Diagnostic errors, which include both failure to diagnose and misdiagnosis of a condition or injury
- Communication errors, including discharge errors, failure to inform, poor documentation, and more
- Medication errors, such as the wrong medication, errors in dosage, failure to check for allergies, or dangerous drug interactions
- Failure to order tests, or failure to correctly interpret diagnostic tests
Any of these mistakes can lead to a worsening of a patient’s condition, often leading to disabling injury and, in the worst cases, fatal outcomes.
Types of Emergency Room Errors
The majority of ER mistakes end up making the patient’s original condition worse. One example would be a patient presenting with symptoms of a heart attack being sent home without proper testing, and later dying from cardiac arrest. However, this is just one of nearly limitless scenarios. Other injuries and complications arising from emergency room errors can include:
- Strokes
- Aneurysms
- Deep vein thrombosis
- Hospital-acquired infections
- Heart attacks
- Bleeding out
- Brain damage
- Wrongful death
If you believe your or your loved one’s injuries were a result of emergency room negligence, talk to Wilt Injury Lawyers to determine who should be held liable.
