Because of which a 31-year-old young woman died, it aroused great interest among our readers. And we suddenly realized that we write about similar cases with enviable regularity. In order not to be unfounded, we have made a selection of the most sensational stories over the past 10 years. They all took place in Karelia, and each one hides its own misfortune. Read about what mistakes doctors make, whether you should blindly trust medicine, and why doctors go unpunished in our material. And let’s make a reservation right away: we don’t want to denigrate our doctors or cause distrust in them. All of the above are just bare facts.
Three million for the death of his wife and mother
This incident occurred in 2008, but the relatives of 33-year-old Anzhelika Anokhina will never forget about it. Then, during an operation at the gynecological hospital in Petrozavodsk, a diaper measuring 50 by 30 centimeters was left in Angelica’s body. Angelica lived for five months in terrible agony, went through probably a dozen doctors, and not one of them made the correct diagnosis. The husband of the deceased, Alexey Anokhin, who was left with three children, decided to punish with a ruble all the hospitals where his wife visited - the Gutkin Maternity Hospital, whose division is a gynecological hospital, emergency hospital, infectious diseases and republican hospitals. In fact, there was no need to prove the doctors’ guilt in court - as part of the criminal case, a Moscow examination was carried out, where it was written in black and white what unforgivable mistakes the doctors made at each stage of treatment. According to experts, Angelica’s death could have been prevented; there was plenty of time for this.
In 2011, a trial was held in this high-profile criminal case. The doctors did not want to admit guilt and cited the patient’s heavy weight.
– The woman was third degree obese, she had no muscles, she replaced them adipose tissue. She did not have muscle tension, which occurs with an acute abdomen. The fat layer did not give symptoms of peritoneal irritation, they complained.
The death of her mother was experienced most severely by her 13-year-old daughter Alina; the girl became depressed, thought about suicide, and even had to seek help from a psychologist. The twin brothers, who were 8 years old, also remembered their mother. In general, the children were very attached to their mother. They cried when my mother was once again admitted to the hospital and asked her not to leave. According to the doctors’ recollections, Anzhelika Anokhina talked all the time about children and hurried to see them.
According to the court decision, the maternity hospital had to pay the Anokhin family one and a half million rubles for moral damages, 600 thousand - to the emergency hospital, half a million - to the infectious diseases hospital and 400 thousand - to the republican one.
Left without examination
A shocking story happened in the Prionezhsky region. A patient was brought to the head of the surgical department of a local hospital: a minor boy had been in an accident and urgently needed to be examined. But the doctor decided not to do a full examination abdominal cavity and stated that everything was fine with the young man. Later it turned out that the young man received serious injury liver, his condition worsened. Doctors performed an emergency operation, but it did not help: the young man died.
For the fact that the doctor did not provide timely assistance to the patient, the court of first instance found the doctor guilty and sentenced him to imprisonment for a suspended term of 2 years with a probationary period of 2 years. In addition, the court also partially satisfied the civil claim of the victims for compensation for moral damage in the amount of 100 thousand rubles. But the meeting participants were dissatisfied with this decision and filed an appeal.
The Supreme Court of the Republic of Karelia, having recently considered the case, reduced the doctor’s sentence to 1 year 11 months in prison with a probationary period of 2 years. And the civil claim for compensation for moral damage was canceled and sent for a new trial.
“They are doctors - they know better”
— I’ll buy a boat and go fishing. Nature, silence, beauty! — said Petrozavodsk resident Evgeniy Mekkiev about his plans for retirement. But in February 2014, the month of his 55th birthday, he fell ill. My back and chest hurt, the pain radiated to my right thigh. Doctors of the Department clinical hospital, where Evgeniy was observed as a railway employee, he was diagnosed with an exacerbation of osteochondrosis.
The prescribed medications did not help Evgeniy. Every day the pain became stronger. As Evgeniy Mekkiev’s relatives recall, after three months there were so many medications that they did not fit on the windowsill: he was already taking handfuls of pills. Doctors prescribed more and more new medications. During these 5 months, judging by the entries in the card, the patient was seen by several doctors at the railway clinic: two different therapists, a neurologist, and a surgeon. And everyone wrote the same diagnosis - osteochondrosis. Meanwhile, the man could no longer move normally, much less work.
In June, Evgeniy was admitted to the railway hospital for two weeks. And again, she was treated for osteochondrosis of the thoracic spine and intercostal neuralgia. As stated in the discharge summary, after treatment the pain in the chest and back decreased. But there were pains underneath right shoulder blade. The patient was discharged home for outpatient treatment.
Believing the doctors that he had osteochondrosis, the man decided to undergo paid procedures at the Petrozavodsk Bone Clinic. But after two weeks of procedures, he did not feel any better. At home, Evgeniy was already walking around, holding onto the walls. Moreover, severe pain in my legs appeared at night. The neurologist at the clinic continued to prescribe pills and rub Aertal cream for the patient. In July, Evgeniy visited different doctors at the clinic every 2-3 days.
“The doctor at the Bone Clinic told him that after such procedures he should already be running, and advised him to go to the neurological department of the Republican Hospital. We led him to the hospital by the arm. He himself could no longer walk; he was practically dying. On paid consultation At the Republican Hospital, the doctor immediately told my husband that he did not have neurology.
Evgeniy went for examination. The patient was x-rayed and found to have multiple bone fractures. The diagnosis sounded scary - multiple myeloma, simply put, blood cancer. A week later, after Evgeniy ended up in intensive care, his kidneys failed. As doctors told his relatives, he was on the verge of death. Kidney damage is one of the most severe complications multiple myeloma. If the kidneys had failed at home, the patient might not have been saved. And if the correct diagnosis had been made earlier, then perhaps the kidneys would not have failed.
The doctors who examined Evgeniy Mekkiev did not want to comment on this case. And one of the doctors said that two weeks after Evgeniy Mekkiev’s kidneys failed, she diagnosed him with Parkinson’s disease.
— Interesting case. I clearly saw parkinsonian syndrome. Perhaps this is a manifestation of a toxic effect on brain cells. The bones disintegrated and poisoned the bones of the brain. Now I will tell students about this case,” she said.
The 76-year-old mother of Evgeniy Mekkiev still cannot recover from the death of her eldest son. First month elderly woman Every day I came to my son’s grave.
Without help
The Kemsky District Court heard the case of a surgeon whose fault a patient died. A 15-year-old boy was brought to the Kemi railway hospital after an accident. In the presence of medical indications When he received an abdominal injury, the doctor did not conduct a full examination of his abdominal organs.
Meanwhile, the young man suffered a liver injury and ruptured it. The correct diagnosis was made only more than 4 hours after a significant deterioration in the patient’s health. The operation did not lead to a positive result, and the young man died in the hospital.
The court found the doctor guilty and sentenced him to 2 years probation with a probationary period of 2 years. The doctor must also pay the family of the deceased 100 thousand rubles in moral compensation.
“Why can’t you give birth?”
This happened in 2012. Tatyana Tyapkina will never forget those August days spent in the maternity hospital. On August 20, the woman’s blood pressure rose slightly, and the gynecologist sent her to the maternity hospital. And on August 23, Tatyana started having contractions.
“It happened in the morning, but I endured it until the evening,” says the woman. “Then the doctor examined me, they gave me some kind of injection - and the pain seemed to recede a little, but still did not go away. I suffered through the night, and in the morning I went to the doctors and said that I couldn’t stand it anymore. The interval between contractions was already 3-4 minutes, and there was less and less time left. But I was told to wait - the doctors had a shift change. Then they finally came to me and sent me to the delivery room to give birth.
All this time, Tatyana’s mother was next to her; she wanted to support her daughter. The woman recalls: her contractions lasted a very long time, she suffered from three o’clock in the afternoon until seven in the evening. Then the story with the shift change repeated itself, and Tatyana was given an injection again. It subsided the contractions, and she lay alone for more than an hour - none of the doctors or midwives approached her. At that moment, the woman became scared: she did not understand what was happening to her and how long it would last.
The boy was born almost immediately after the doctor and midwife finally appeared in the delivery room. Tatyana kept waiting for the child to scream, but she never heard anything. The maternity hospital staff began to fuss, kicked her mother out of the room and began looking for a resuscitator. For more than half an hour they tried to bring the baby back to life, but all attempts were in vain.
The woman cannot forgive the doctors for not being with her at the right time, and therefore her son, who was born completely healthy, suffocated. After the incident, Tatyana was immediately surrounded by attention: she was transferred to a separate ward and a psychologist was brought in. The woman just sighs: this would be attention to her - during childbirth.
What surprised the woman most of all was the doctors’ reaction: instead of admitting guilt or simply apologizing, they blamed Tatyana’s husband for the death of the child!
“They told me that the child smelled of something, which means he had an infection that my husband allegedly brought to me.” Like, during my pregnancy he went “to the left,” Tatyana recalls. “And because of this infection, the child was born dead.” That is, they also tried to quarrel with us all. This is just nonsense, my husband and I dreamed so much about a child, we were waiting for him so much... He immediately passed all the tests - of course, no infection was found in him. Then other strange things began. At first, doctors claimed that the child was not strangled. And then the documents indicated that the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. Although in the report that I received from the morgue, there is not a word about this. The cause of death was listed as asphyxia - lack of oxygen. They also found several burst blood vessels in my son’s head. Perhaps they burst at the moment when the midwife grabbed my leg and began to press, shouting: “Why can’t you give birth?..”. Later I read that the child dies 12 hours after the start of contractions. And I was in labor for 13 hours.
Lethal treatment
The Investigative Committee of Karelia opened a criminal case against Petrozavodsk doctors who are accused of improper execution their responsibilities. According to Sledkom, in May last year, a resident of Petrozavodsk turned for help to one of the city clinics.
The local doctor found a spinal disease in him and prescribed treatment, including physical therapy, after which the man’s condition worsened.
He called an ambulance, but it did not go to him - over the phone the man was given recommendations on what to do and what medications to take. Then the unfortunate man again went to the clinic to see the local police officer and explained that he felt even worse. However, the doctor still did not cancel the prescribed treatment for him. On the same day, the man died of heart disease. Only four days passed between the day he turned to his local police officer and the day of his death. Investigators will have to find out whether the doctors are to blame for the incident and evaluate the actions of the doctors.
"Sit and wait for your child to die"
It all started like a common cold. On August 18, 5-month-old Miroslav developed a fever. To exclude the possibility of pneumonia, the child and mother were admitted to the hospital. They took pictures of the baby, no pneumonia was detected, and Anna and the baby returned home. And at night little Miroslav started vomiting.
— We went to the hospital again, where they gave us an injection to prevent vomiting. Moreover, I told the doctors that my son is very afraid of injections, they need to slightly stretch the place where to give the injection. A month ago he was pumped out after vaccination: he began to choke. “Oh, what are you starting,” the doctors waved me off,” says Anna Chernousova. “As a result, the child again had a shock reaction to the injection.
According to my mother, in the future the doctors at the Segezha Central District Hospital did nothing but brush aside her worries and doubts. At 5 am, Miroslav felt even worse: he could not hold his head up, and the pupils in his eyes were running erratically.
— A neurologist came, looked at my child and said: “This is the third time in my life I’ve seen this. “This is an allergy to the medicine,” Anna recalls. “You need to get an allergy shot.” Even then, my child, who was afraid of injections, did not react at all.
All these two days that Anna lay in the Segezha hospital, her mother’s heart did not find peace. Mom asked to send them to Petrozavodsk.
“I told the head of the children’s department, Tatyana Pikaleva, several times to see that there was something wrong with my child. But she just said: “Why are you running after me, I have a heavy baby in the maternity ward. What is Petrozavodsk like? Are you okay. Now we’ll put in an IV and that’s it.”
By that time, Miroslav had undergone a puncture to rule out meningitis. The baby was fed through a tube.
“In the evening of the second day he even came to his senses, he even smiled,” says Anna. “And then he stopped reacting altogether.” The manager came, shone a light in his eyes and said: “See, see, there is a light effect.” At this time, a nurse is sitting, looking at me and whispering to me: “To Petrozavodsk, to Petrozavodsk.” Then I burst into the staff room and screamed for my child to be urgently taken by ambulance to Petrozavodsk.
Three hours later, after the boy was brought to the Petrozavodsk infectious diseases hospital, he fell into a third-degree coma, the most severe coma. The child's lungs have failed, and now he breathes only with the help of a machine artificial ventilation lungs.
According to the parents, doubts that Miroslav did not have a tumor at all crept into them after a second conversation with the doctor who did the MRI. Alexey went to pick up the pictures to send them to federal clinics. The doctor said that the diagnosis of “tumor” did not correspond to the MRI data.
“When they told us that we had a tumor, we were shocked. Miroslav had an ultrasound at 1 month and at 3. It turns out that such a huge tumor formed in two days? Can cancer develop so quickly? I had absolutely healthy child, he didn't even cry. I slept peacefully at night, so perfect that every evening I thanked God for such a child. “I didn’t even think that children could be like that,” says Anna Chernousova.
The Chernousov family began to seek help from specialists in federal clinics in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The family started real war with doctors and officials from the Ministry of Health.
“We ourselves came to the Ministry of Health and named 5 clinics where Miroslav’s images and tests should be sent. We were simply shocked by the attitude towards us at the Ministry of Health. We had to run around asking for our documents to be sent as soon as possible. “I drop into the office of the department specialist in organizing medical care and say that I won’t leave until she sends the documents to the clinics,” says Anna.
Afterwards, Miroslav was re-tested to detect tumor cells. The same oncologist, with a difference of 18 days, gives two different conclusions. When repeating the analysis, no tumor cells were found in the child!
The Karelian Ministry of Health is confident that Miroslav was treated according to all standards. And, according to officials, there is no reason to conduct an internal audit.
“Now my son has some movements, he is moving his leg. The latest study showed that the tumor has decreased slightly, the Chernousovs say. The family now has hope that their son will recover.
Incorrect operation
Maria Erkina has never been sick for as long as she can remember. I was in the hospital only when I gave birth to children - three times. Therefore, when in December of the year before last, almost on the eve of the New Year, her leg began to hurt, Maria at first did not pay any attention to it. There was no time for doctors, especially since she was a widow and the only breadwinner of three minor children. “I just stood up awkwardly, hence the pain,” the woman decided.
But the pain did not go away. On the contrary, she became stronger and stronger. Maria could no longer lie on the sofa; she had to move to the floor and fix her sore leg on a chair.
If you've ever had toothache, you'll understand what I mean, says Maria. - It's the same thing, only in the leg. Then I could no longer restrain myself, I screamed. I called an ambulance several times a day for three days. The doctors came one after another, injected me with painkillers and assured me that everything would pass now. One doctor behaved in a generally rude manner: I’m lying there, I can’t even speak because of the pain, and he almost shouts at me, saying, stop being a fool, get up, you’re faking it! Then, when I started collecting papers for the court, the ambulance told me that they had not recorded my calls. I wasn’t too lazy and took printouts of outgoing calls from my home phone for those three days. It shows when and how many times I dialed the emergency number.
In the end, a young nurse took pity on the suffering woman and sent her to the hospital with a false diagnosis of suspected appendicitis. Maria Erkina was taken to the Emergency Hospital. She spent several days in the neurological department - it is clear that they did not find any appendicitis in her, but at least they injected her with painkillers. Then they did it to her computer diagnostics and set accurate diagnosis: herniation of one of the vertebral discs. The head of the neurosurgical department of the emergency hospital explained to Maria that she had to agree to the operation, there was no other choice.
They promised me that after the operation I would drop by almost the next day,” Maria recalls.
The woman was operated on. Closer to the New Year, patients began to be discharged. Maria also wanted to spend the holiday with the children, so she asked to be discharged, although the pain in her leg did not go away. The main thing is that at least it became a little easier. The doctors promised that the pain would gradually go away.
Until the summer, Maria walked with a cane. Her children took her to see a doctor at the clinic; she was practically unable to walk alone. The doctors refused to go to her house; for some reason they believed that the woman was faking it. They say that after such an operation, patients “fly” within a week, but she still limps with a cane.
Maybe if they had done everything right for me, I would have “flyed,” says Maria, “but every month it got worse and worse. One day I was walking from the clinic and suddenly such unbearable pain came that I fell straight to the ground. Suddenly the police arrived, they thought I was drunk. They almost took me to the department, well, I had a certificate from the clinic with me.
Finally, Maria decided to see a neurosurgeon republican hospital. He was surprised: more than six months had passed since the operation, and the pain had not gone away. He ordered a repeat computer examination for Maria. Having seen his results, the surgeon did not say anything, he only redirected the woman back to the emergency hospital with the words: “Let those who did this explain to you...” As it turned out, during Maria’s operation, the healthy L4-L5 vertebra was mistakenly removed instead of the diseased L5-S1 vertebra .
When Maria returned to the city hospital, it seemed to her that they had been waiting for her there for a long time. The doctors immediately admitted their mistake and suggested a repeat operation. The head of neurosurgery himself volunteered to do it.
The doctor told me: you have the right to file a complaint, we will punish the surgeon who made a mistake, but, you understand, anything can happen, he just touched another vertebra by accident,” the woman says. - Why didn’t they tell me about this before? The epicrisis said that I was healthy. And from the report of Ingosstrakh-M, where I applied to conduct an investigation, it becomes clear that I actually had the wrong vertebra removed.
Maria underwent a second operation. The pain is almost gone. But leg numbness and lameness remained. Now Maria cannot walk for a long time; she is forbidden to work while bending down. The woman does not comply with this requirement because she works as a cleaner. My eyes don't allow me to find another job. Maria is visually impaired.
- Recently, I stopped going to the clinic and turned to paid doctor, says the woman. - So he explained that a vertebral hernia is not a reason for surgery; this disease can be cured in a month with the help of injections and medications. And I went to court. I'm offended. I was healthy woman, and now... And no one even apologized!
Plaster “a la Plisetskaya”
51-year-old Evgeniy Gelzin slipped and fell in a flower shop. He bought a bouquet for his wife - it was her birthday that day.
“He comes in, holds flowers in front of him, and he limps,” recalls Svetlana Gelzina. - And he says: “Can you imagine, I just tumbled like that, but the flowers are intact.”
The bruised area on his left leg hurt, and Evgeniy decided to go to the emergency room. He returned with a diagnosis of a ruptured Achilles tendon and a referral to the hospital. He went to the emergency hospital the next day. Evgeniy was immediately scheduled for surgery: the damaged tendon had to be stitched. By evening the patient was operated on.
Seeing her husband, Svetlana became worried:
“We arrive, and his leg is in plaster all the way to the groin. Huge heavy plaster! As my husband said, plaster “a la Plisetskaya”! He lay on an antediluvian bed, the spring sank almost to the floor. I hung like in a hammock in this bed. But after the operation, they should have put him on a shield.
Svetlana Gelzina was told that her husband would stay in the hospital for 10 days. But already on the second day, Evgeniy was unexpectedly discharged.
“I’m asking my husband on the phone what happened.” And he told me: “I don’t know what’s happening, it seems like there’s an emergency evacuation, everyone is being discharged!” But Zhenya was not even taught to walk on crutches.
They explained to Svetlana Gelzina that her husband did not require any treatment; he was an outpatient and could be treated at home. Evgeniy had to walk in a cast for eight weeks.
Two weeks later, Evgeniy Gelzin died. Suddenly and almost instantly, in front of my 19-year-old son. As stated in medical documents, cause of death – “thromboembolism of the pulmonary artery against the background of acute thrombosis of the deep veins of the left lower limb" To put it simply, blood thickened in the patient’s casted leg and a blood clot formed, which broke off and blocked the pulmonary artery. The tragedy could have been foreseen and prevented.
The Ministry of Health conducted an internal investigation into the death of Gelzin. The dry lines of the report speak of errors, or, as they are called in the document, defects of the medical staff. Thus, the operating doctor, and subsequently the attending physician, “failed to comply with the requirements for the prevention of deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism in the pre- and postoperative period.” Meanwhile, this prevention is prescribed not just anywhere, but in the order of the Ministry of Health, issued back in 2003. This order hangs in the resident's room of the trauma department!
It says in black and white: “Sharp venous thrombosis develops in 30% of general surgical patients undergoing surgery, in 70-80% after traumatological and orthopedic interventions.” How can a doctor not know this?!
But the worst thing is different. It is quite possible that Evgeniy Gelzin did not have any rupture of the Achilles tendon!
“The forensic expert’s report says that the tendon is unchanged,” Valery Khilkevich, first deputy of the investigation department of Petrozavodsk, told us. – A forensic expert, if he sees traces of ruptures or injuries, describes it in detail, but if not, he records the fact of absence.
– So there was no rupture of the Achilles tendon?
– According to preliminary data, yes.
If this fact is confirmed by the next examination, the scale of the medical error is shocking. When performing an operation, it is impossible not to notice the absence of damage. To put a heavy plaster cast on a healthy person... I can’t wrap my head around something like this!
The Karelian Ministry of Health commented on the forensic expert’s conclusion: the report does not contain an examination of the damaged tendon, which “does not allow us to assess the nature of the damage to the Achilles tendon and the consistency of the surgical suture.” It’s strange, because if there had been a seam, it could not have failed to attract the attention of the forensic expert.
The doctor who operated on Gelzin was reprimanded. He continues to work.
– I cry every day! Our sun is gone! We lived with him for 28 years, and I felt like a happy person! He won’t come home anymore, won’t shout: “Hello, hares!” – Svetlana Gelzina is inconsolable in her grief.
Unsuccessful birth
A 28-year-old young mother was admitted to the maternity hospital. Gutkin in Petrozavodsk on the night of March 2 at the 37th week of pregnancy with complaints of abdominal pain.
The next day, the obstetricians decided that it was necessary to induce labor. Doctors administered the necessary medicine, but it did not help. Then the obstetricians tried to deliver the baby using a vacuum extractor.
It was not possible to get the baby out right away. The vacuum nozzle was changed several times. Perhaps it was because of this that a scalped wound and numerous hematomas formed on the boy’s head. During the procedure, the baby's heartbeat slowed down. Then the doctors urgently changed the birth plan - they performed a caesarean section. Only then did doctors see that the boy was being held by an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, torso and legs. At that time, the child was no longer breathing. Resuscitators managed to save the baby’s life.
It is worth noting that in our country, vacuum extraction is used in 0.12 - 0.20% of all births. Modern medicine resorts to surgery caesarean section, if it is impossible to provoke the natural process of childbirth.
Today the child is in a coma. He cannot breathe on his own, he is connected to a machine artificial respiration. In addition, due to damage to the nervous system, the newborn has impaired muscle tone and lacks reflexes.
Diagnosed with severe perinatal damage to the central nervous system mixed origin", "convulsive syndrome", "cephalohematomas of both parietal bones" the child was transferred to the department intensive care Republican Children's Hospital.
- As the doctors said, if your son comes to his senses, at most he will only be able to move his eyes. His brain is very damaged,” his father said. - Upon discharge from the maternity hospital. Gutkin, the head physician in a conversation with us asked for forgiveness. He said that there was a consultation, and the doctor might be disciplined.
The head doctor of the maternity hospital, Evgeniy Tuchin, said that he constantly keeps in touch with the parents and is very worried about what happened.
— A serious internal audit is currently underway. There is no need to talk about any negligence or mistake of doctors. We will check the actions of the staff minute by minute. Looking ahead a little, I will say that there are times when the umbilical cord itself plays an important role, but not in this particular case.
The Karelian Ministry of Health reported that they are monitoring the fate of the child, but it is too early to draw conclusions.
“It’s sad that the child was born with severe asphyxia. Children are plastic. And a miracle can happen,” commented Elena Kuzmicheva, head of the department for organizing medical care for women and children.
The parents submitted a statement to the Petrozavodsk prosecutor's office with a request to conduct an investigation and bring the perpetrators to justice. They also took the application to the Ministry of Health of Karelia for further investigation.
"Is this yours?"
On September 26, 2013, 23-year-old Jan Radziulis died after the doctor on duty at the Chikin Emergency Hospital was too lazy to examine him. According to the official version, a police patrol squad found the guy at night on the side of the road and reported him to the ambulance. The ambulance took Ian to the hospital, and no one there helped him. Workers medical institution They considered the man drunk and limited themselves to calling his mother and the police so that someone would save them from unnecessary work. When Yana's mother entered emergency department, she saw her son lying on the tiled floor. He moaned, screamed, blood flowed from his nose, but not a single medical worker I didn’t consider it my duty to approach him.
- Is this yours? – a woman in a white robe, who was in that room, turned to Jan’s mother.
That's what she said. In the neuter gender. About a person.
The police took the mother and son home and helped him get to his apartment. He wasn't getting any better. The guy was screaming, apparently in terrible pain. In the afternoon, my mother called an ambulance again. Ian was taken to the same hospital. And then it turned out that there were normal doctors there. One look into the pupils of the dying man was enough to understand that the matter was very serious. Tomography, resuscitation, the efforts of doctors, but it was too late - young, just yesterday healthy man died. Ian suffered a fracture of the base of the skull, a fracture of the right orbital plate of the frontal bone, a linear fracture of the squama of the occipital bone, a severe brain contusion and many other injuries. In addition, the forensic medical examination report stated that Ian was sober at the time of receiving these injuries. What happened at night? Why didn’t all the staff on duty at the city hospital pay attention to the unfortunate boy? Why does a woman - a medical worker - consider it possible to call her patient in the neuter gender?
“This is a very unpleasant situation,” said the head physician of the emergency hospital, Alexey Kheifets, at the time. – The neurosurgeon on duty showed criminal negligence. There will probably be a criminal trial. And, if this doctor is proven guilty, we will take measures up to and including a retaliatory lawsuit.
What is meant? This means that if the relatives of the deceased file a claim against the hospital, the hospital will forward it to one specific unscrupulous doctor, Chikin. After all, the hospital is not to blame. What about other doctors? After all, Chikin wasn’t the only one on duty that night?
– But the neurosurgeon took him. The rest should not interfere,” explained the head physician.
- And the nurses? Well, all the health workers who see a person suffering from pain? After all, he doesn't even
tried to stop the bleeding. They didn't even pick him up from the floor. He still lay next to the stretcher.
- Average medical staff follows doctor's orders. But there were no orders from him.
That is, it is not the hospital’s fault where doctors and nurses indifferently pass by a dying person. Not a system in which no one will approach you, blaming everything on one particular Chikin. Not the Ministry of Health, whose Ivan Ivanovich believes that failure to provide assistance to a suffering person is just a “defect” that is not worth serious punishment.
There are many examples of indifferent attitude towards people on the part of our healthcare system. But the Ivan Ivanovichs do not see a pattern in this, they do not even want to discuss it. They see one individual trauma surgeon, one individual neurosurgeon, one individual nurse. They call it the human factor, emphasizing that it “always was, is and will be.” And they don’t want to understand that the notorious “human factor” is themselves – soulless officials, indifferent to other people’s pain and suffering...
Wrong estimate
In November 2014, a Petrozavodsk resident went to the hospital with complaints of fever and pain in the hypochondrium. The attending physician made the diagnosis. Despite the procedures and prescribed treatment, the patient died after 8 days in the hospital.
The medical examination established that during the management of this patient, an incorrect assessment of his condition was given during ultrasound control, as a result of which complications arose and the operation was performed untimely. The same examination established that the disease, which was not recognized by doctors in a timely manner, was not fatal and, if treated in a timely manner, would have resulted in recovery.
In court, the relatives demanded moral compensation from the hospital.
The court considered that the moral damage caused to the plaintiffs by moral experiences in connection with the loss of their father is subject to compensation under the provisions of civil law, since the loss of a loved one is an irreparable loss. The Emergency Hospital recovered compensation for moral damages in the amount of 800 thousand rubles in favor of each of the plaintiffs.
No punishment
An emergency hospital endoscopist who was accused of causing the death of his patient due to medical negligence has been found guilty. Let us remind you: according to the investigation, during one of the procedures, the doctor instructed the nurse to close the valve on the equipment to which the patient was connected.
Turns out he didn't like it bad smell, which came from the patient. This led to the fact that the woman simply could not exhale the air entering her. Her body began to swell in front of the hospital staff. The patient died soon after.
The deceased was in the hospital with an unknown diagnosis. What did the doctors not suspect about her? But they were ultimately unable to understand why the woman fell into a coma. It was repeatedly said in court that the patient most likely would not have been able to get out without the history of the valve. And that the attending physician of the woman, conducting resuscitation measures, after closing this unfortunate cap, he did not take all the necessary measures to resuscitate the patient. But neither one nor the other could and was not taken into account in court. The conclusions of the examinations are clear: the woman died from barotrauma as a result of the closure of the valve on the endotracheal tube.
No matter how convincingly the endoscopist spoke before the court, proving that he could not give the order to close, and even for such, from his point of view, an absurd reason, the valve on someone else’s equipment, the judge did not believe him. He also did not believe the nurse, who also categorically denies that she closed the valve and that she received any instructions in this regard.
The judge did not find any aggravating circumstances against the doctor. As a softening agent - considered it good characteristics, no criminal record and wife's pregnancy. As a result, as requested by the state prosecutor, the endoscopist was sentenced to a year of restriction of freedom. This means that he can continue to live the life of an ordinary person, only for twelve months he will not be able to change his place of work or place of residence without the consent of a specialized body, he must report monthly to the same body and not travel outside of Petrozavodsk. As the judge explained, he had no reason to deprive the doctor of his job, because he committed a crime of “minor” gravity.
Medical errors are that difficult section of medicine, which, unfortunately, not a single practicing doctor can avoid, and which, alas, is not included in the training programs of higher [medical doctors]. educational institutions Russia. At the same time, this problem remains at the center of attention of surgeons. Evidence of the importance and permanence of the problem is provided by the monophases of R. Stich, M. Makkas and K. Bauer, S.L. Libov, EA Wagner, as well as program discussions at International Congresses (for example, one of the problems considered at the First European Congress of Pediatric Surgeons in Austria in 1995 was the analysis of medical errors).
L Definition. Medical error is a bona fide mistake made by a doctor, which resulted or could result in certain damage to the patient’s health. It is important to emphasize two points in this definition. Firstly, we are talking only about the bona fide errors of the doctor, and not about negligence, actions committed while intoxicated or intentionally, which refers to medical crimes subject to trial. Secondly, an error does not necessarily lead to any complications. For example, a patient was diagnosed with “acute appendicitis”, and during the operation the appendix was not changed, but the inflamed Möckem diverticulum was removed, which was resected. The patient did not suffer any damage, everything was laid out correctly, but the mistake was obvious.
" Classification of medical errors
- Diagnostic errors - errors in recognizing diseases and their complications (oversight or misdiagnosis of a disease or complication) - the most numerous group of errors.
- Treatment and tactical errors, as a rule, are the result of diagnostic miscalculations. However, there are cases when the diagnosis is made correctly, but therapeutic tactics chosen incorrectly.
- Technical errors - errors in carrying out diagnostic and therapeutic manipulations, procedures, techniques, operations.
- Organizational errors - errors in the organization of certain types of medical care, necessary conditions functioning of a particular service, etc.
- Deontological errors are errors in the behavior of a doctor, his communication with patients and their relatives, colleagues, nurses, and orderlies.
- Errors in filling out medical documentation are quite common, especially among surgeons. Unintelligible records of operations, the postoperative period, and discharge notes when the patient was sent to another medical institution make it extremely difficult to understand what happened to the patient.
- All causes of medical errors can be divided into two groups:
b. Subjective - reasons directly related to the personality of the doctor, the characteristics of his activities, i.e. reasons that we can and must influence.
Objective reasons usually create the background, and an error is realized, usually due to subjective reasons, which opens up real opportunities to reduce the number of medical errors. One of the ways is the analysis of medical errors, which requires compliance with certain rules.
- Objective reasons
b. Differences among doctors in experience, knowledge, level of training and, excuse me, intelligence and abilities. The great English playwright Bernard Shaw noted well: if we agree that doctors are not magicians, but ordinary people, then we must admit that at one end of the scale there is a small percentage of highly gifted individuals, at the other there is an equally small percentage of murderously hopeless idiots, and all others are located between them. It is difficult to argue against this opinion, and no improvements educational process and the training of doctors cannot exclude this cause.
V. Differences in equipment medical institutions certainly affect the level of diagnosis. Naturally, having modern diagnostic methods (MPT, KT, ultrasound), it is easier to identify, for example, a tumor internal organs than on the basis of routine x-ray examinations. The above also applies to emergency diagnostics.
d. The emergence of new diseases, or known but long forgotten ones. This reason does not appear often, but entails a significant number of diagnostic tests.
errors. Most a shining example is HIV infection, leading to the development of AIDS - a disease that has confronted doctors with the problem of diagnosing it and an insoluble problem, especially of treatment. The emergence of neglected and rare diseases such as malaria, typhus inevitably entails serious diagnostic problems.
d. Presence of concomitant diseases. It is extremely difficult, for example, to recognize acute appendicitis in a patient with Schönlein-Hönoch disease or hemophilia, to remove intussusception in a child with dysentery, etc.
e. Young age. "How younger child, the more difficult the diagnosis.”
- Subjective reasons
b. Neglecting an accessible and informative research method is quite common reason diagnostic errors. The most striking example is the neglect of digital rectal examination in patients with vague abdominal pain. Views of pelvic acute appendicitis, ovarian cyst torsion, ectopic pregnancy, ovarian apoplexy - this is an incomplete list of typical mistakes associated with underestimating the information content of a digital rectal examination.
V. Excessive self-confidence of the doctor, refusal of advice from a colleague or consultation.
This reason is characteristic of both young surgeons (fear of losing their authority, a kind of youth syndrome) and highly experienced specialists (the syndrome of one’s own infallibility), and often leads to tragic mistakes, and the doctor’s actions often border on crime. Thinkers of the past and present have repeatedly warned about the danger confidence in one’s own infallibility: “The less you know, the less you doubt!” (Robert Turgot); “Only fools and dead men never change their minds” (Lowell); “An intelligent doctor, that is, one who feels the smallness of his knowledge and experience, will never despise the nurses’ comments, but even more so will take advantage of them” (M.Ya. Mudrov). But how often do you see an experienced elderly surgeon sharply digging young colleague: “Enough, I know it myself, eggs don’t teach chicken!”
d. The use of outdated methods of diagnosis and treatment is, as a rule, the lot of older generation surgeons, when reasonable caution imperceptibly turns into a rejection of everything new. Often this is the result of an uninformed doctor who does not read modern specialized literature and who lags behind progress modern surgery. “In the art of medicine there are no doctors who have completed their science” (M.Ya. Mudrov). “Learning all your life for the benefit of society - this is the calling of a doctor” (AA Ostroumov).
d. Blind faith in everything new, thoughtless attempts to introduce new methods into practice without taking into account the circumstances, necessity, complexity and their potential danger. At the dawn of Russian cardiac surgery, notes appeared in the general press about surgeons who successfully performed mitral commissurotomy in conditions of regional pain
prostrate (!). Of course, the risk to which insufficiently examined and prepared patients were exposed is absolutely unjustified. Sometimes such actions of a young colleague are dictated by inexperience, a sincere desire to introduce something new; it’s worse when the hidden reason is the desire to see your name in the newspaper: “for the first time in the Koldybansky district, surgeon K., etc.”
e. Excessive faith in intuition, a hasty, superficial examination of the patient is often the cause of serious diagnostic miscalculations. Medical intuition should be understood as a fusion of experience, constantly updated knowledge, observation and the unique ability of the brain to issue a lightning-fast decision on a subconscious level. Colleagues who abuse this gift need to remember the words of Academician AA Aleksandrov that intuition is like a pyramid, where the base is enormous work and the top is insight. “I don’t have much time to hastily look at the sick” (P.F. Borovsky).
and. Excessive passion surgical technique to the detriment of education and improvement of clinical thinking. This phenomenon can be considered “pathognomonic” for young surgeons. Apparently, the operation itself so impresses the imagination of the young doctor that it pushes into the background the everyday arduous work of finding the correct diagnosis, justifying the indications for the operation, choosing the optimal plan, and preparing for postoperative nursing of the patient. We often see how novice surgeons are sincerely happy when it turns out that the patient is going to have an operation, and are upset when it becomes clear that they can do without intervention. But it should be the other way around! The highest goal of surgery is not only the development of new, more advanced operations, but also, above all, the search for non-surgical methods treatment of those diseases that today can only be cured with a surgeon’s knife. It is no coincidence that methods of low-traumatic endoscopic surgery are being introduced into practice so rapidly. Any operation is always aggression; the surgeon should not forget about this. The famous French surgeon Thierry de Martel wrote that a surgeon is known not only by the operations that he was able to perform, but also by those that he was able to reasonably refuse. The German surgeon Kulenkampff said that “performing an operation is more or less a matter of technique, but abstaining from it is the result of the skillful work of refined thought, strict self-criticism and precise observation.”
h. The doctor’s desire to hide behind the authority of consultants. With increasing specialization of medicine, this reason is becoming more common. The attending surgeon, without bothering himself with an analysis of clinical manifestations, invites consultants, regularly records their opinions, sometimes very contradictory, in the medical history, and completely forgets that the leading figure in the diagnostic and treatment process is not the consulting physician, regardless of his title , namely, he is the attending physician. The fact that consultants should not overshadow the personality of the attending physician does not at all contradict reasonable collegiality and consultations. But such a “path” to diagnosis is absolutely unacceptable, when the surgeon declares: “Let the therapist remove the diagnosis of right-sided basal pleuropneumonia, the infectious disease specialist will exclude intestinal infection“, the urologist will rule out kidney disease, then I’ll think about whether the patient has acute appendicitis.”
and Neglect of an unusual symptom is very often the cause of errors. An unusual symptom is a sign that is not typical for of this disease or a given period of its course. For example, a patient who underwent an emergency appendectomy several hours ago under general anesthesia began vomiting. Quicker
In all, this is the usual post-anesthesia vomiting of a patient poorly prepared for surgery. It is a completely different matter when vomiting appears on the fifth day in the same patient, which may be a sign of peritonitis, early adhesive obstruction or another catastrophe in the abdominal cavity. Every unusual symptom requires urgent identification the real reason and developing further tactics that take this reason into account. It is better in such situations to convene an emergency consultation. j. Passion for a variety of special research methods to the detriment of clinical thinking is a reason that has become increasingly common in recent years. The implementation itself modern technologies V medical practice progressive; it opens up new diagnostic possibilities, changing the very ideology of the diagnostic and treatment processes. However, this process also has real undesirable sides that depend solely on the doctor. Firstly, there is an unreasonable prescribing to a patient of all possible studies in a given clinic. Secondly, when prescribing invasive, potentially life-threatening methods (probing of the heart cavities, angiography, laparoscopy, etc.), the doctor does not always think about the possibility of replacing them with safer ones. Finally, specialists of a new formation began to appear - a kind of “computerized doctors”, relying in their judgments exclusively on the data of a “machine” examination and neglecting anamnesis and physical examination methods. A.F. Bilibin, speaking at the First All-Union Conference on Problems of Medical Deontology (1969), said: “The saddest thing is that the development of technology does not coincide with the development of the emotional culture of the doctor. Technology nowadays receives applause; We are not against this, but we would like the general culture of the doctor to receive applause as well. Consequently, we are not talking about a fear of technology, but about the fear that the doctor will lose the ability to control his clinical thinking if he is carried away by technology.” Read these words again, colleague, and think about how relevant they are today!
. Conditions Conducive to Medical Errors
- Extreme situations requiring immediate solutions. It has long been noted that most intraoperative miscalculations occur in critical situations (sudden profuse bleeding, cardiac arrest, etc.). Therefore, the more complex the situation, the calmer, cooler, and more self-possessed the surgeon should be.
- The surgeon's fatigue and the flow of complex operations also create conditions for error. The surgeon must remember this when concentrating his attention and strength during such times. The time after night duty is not the best time for surgery.
- The forced need to perform work that is not characteristic of the main specialty. Unfortunately, the lack the right specialist(obstetrician-gynecologist, pediatric surgeon etc.) and the urgency of the situation often confront the surgeon with the need to perform one or another operation (amputation of the uterus due to profuse bleeding, cesarean section, tracheotomy in a newborn, etc.). Quick preparation for an unusual operation (plan, technique) and maximum composure will help you get out of a difficult situation with honor. However, the best option is to call a specialist.
- Analysis of medical errors is a prerequisite for reducing their number. The analysis must be constant, it cannot be reduced to quarterly or annual
- The primary goal of analyzing a medical error should not be to find and punish the culprit, but to find the cause of the error and ways to prevent it. But very often the analysis of a mistake is replaced by a search (and sometimes “appointment*”) and punishment of the perpetrator, thereby preserving the conditions for repeating the same mistake in the future.
- Analysis of the error should be carried out delicately, without humiliating the professional and human dignity of the doctor who made the mistake. Alas, much more often thunderous attacks are carried out without restriction in expression.
- The main character in analyzing the error should be the doctor himself who committed it. When on a sleepless night the doctor returns his thoughts again and again to what happened, when he thinks: “Why did I do it this way and not otherwise?”, and in the morning you need to discuss the mistake, but you really don’t want to, then the thought inevitably creeps in: “Or maybe I shouldn’t ? It can be quite easy to hide a medical error (medicine is not an exact science), but drive that thought away! It’s even worse to see over time how your colleague will repeat the mistake you made just because you hid it!
- There is an expression: “You learn from mistakes.” Bismarck is credited with saying: “Only stupid people learn from their mistakes, smart people learn from others.” Both statements are not appropriate for the doctor. A doctor must learn from his own and others’ mistakes, moreover, he is obliged to teach others from his mistakes, in order to reduce their number!
Incredible facts
The patient's healthy leg was amputated. Instead of medication, the woman was given an intramuscular detergent. Do you think this is gossip and horror stories? Not at all. This is reality. Everyone makes mistakes at work, but doctors' mistakes are especially costly. Sometimes they cost your health, and sometimes your life. Moreover, some of these mistakes are difficult to believe. Believe it or not, anything can happen. Even situations from the category “you can’t invent them on purpose.”
Mixed up the leg
It is difficult to imagine that a doctor could confuse left and right. However, this is exactly what happened to one surgeon from Tampa, Florida. In 1995, a surgeon had to amputate the right leg of 52-year-old Willie King. Waking up after surgery, the patient was surprised to find that he had the wrong leg amputated!
The patient was not at all consoled by the fact that his left leg, like his right, was unhealthy, and it, most likely, would also be amputated. King received compensation of $900,000 from the hospital, and $250,000 from the surgeon, who lost his license for 6 months.
Confused eye
This terrible mistake is almost 120 years old. In 1892, an accident happened to 10-year-old Thomas Stewart - the boy came across a knife in his eye and lost his sight as a result. Doctor Alexander Proudfoot decided that the damaged eye needed to be removed. Only after completing the operation did the doctor notice that he had removed healthy eye instead of a blind man!
The wrong organ was irradiated
Radiation is a double-edged sword. It is harmful to health and leads to death, while radiation is successfully used in treatment oncological diseases. Naturally, like any other medical means, irradiation must be used very carefully and in correct dosages. A patient named Jerome-Parks was unlucky. The man suffered from tongue cancer, but due to a computer error, his healthy brainstem and neck were irradiated, and this happened within three days. As a result, the patient became deaf and blind and lost the ability to swallow. He died soon after.
Disinfectant instead of medicine
Always read the labels on packages carefully! Nurse at Virginia Mason Medical Center(Virginia Mason Medical Center), ignored this rule and Injected patient Mary McClinton with an instrument disinfectant instead of medicine. A 69-year-old patient died, and the hospital became much stricter about sorting medications.
Napkin in the stomach
In 2007, Indian woman Sabnam Praveen had a joyful event - her son was born by caesarean section. However, the joy was soon overshadowed by poor health - Praveen was tormented by abdominal pain. After three years of suffering, the patient ended up on the operating table at the Chattisgarh Institute medical sciences(Chattisgarh Institute of Medical Sciences). It seems that the surgeon who performed the caesarean section is a very absent-minded person - he forgot a napkin in the patient's stomach.
It is unknown whether the Indian patient received compensation, but Donald Church “earned” $97,000 from a medical error. In his stomach in 2000 in Washington medical center(Washington Medical Center) forgot a 31 cm surgical instrument.
Food in the lungs
79-year-old patient Eugene Riggs from San Francisco, who suffered from diverticular disease, probably never expected that he would die in the hospital, and the cause of death would not be his disease, but a terrible mistake by doctors. Due to illness, the patient could not receive sufficient quantity food naturally Therefore, the doctors decided that he needed additional nutrition through a special tube. Something went wrong, and as a result, food from the tube began to fall not into the patient’s stomach, but into his... lungs! The error was discovered, but they could not correct it - Rigs died a few months later. Riggs' wife sued the government because, according to United States law, claims cannot be brought against military doctors and hospitals.
Confused about dad
Thomas and Nancy Andrews were having difficulty conceiving a second child and so turned to the New York Medical Services for Reproductive Medicine, where they were offered IVF (in vitro fertilization). ).
When the long-awaited pregnancy arrived, the happiness of the couple knew no bounds. However, the couple were quite surprised when they saw the child born - the child's skin and hair were much darker than those of the parents. Unfortunately, it was not a joke of nature, but a medical error. A DNA test confirmed that the baby's father was not Thomas Andrews, but some other man whose sperm was mistakenly used for artificial insemination. The girl born into the Andrews family was named Jessica.
Don't make the doctor angry, or he'll cut off his penis
Who was unlucky enough to run into a nervous doctor was Nelu Radonescu from Romania. A 36-year-old man went to planned surgery to correct the abnormal structure of the testicles, and as a result he was left without a penis! Don't think that Dr. Naum Ciomu confused the penis with the testicles. It’s just that during the operation he unsuccessfully touched the patient’s urethra and got angry. The disgruntled doctor, in a fit of anger, cut off the patient’s penis and, moreover, cut it into small pieces.
A Romanian court stripped Dr. Choma of his medical license and ordered the patient to pay for an operation to restore his penis (using his skin). own hand), as well as pay for moral damages.
May 31, 2015 - Posted by Guest
MY AWFUL STORY
HOW DOCTORS RUINED MY LIFE!
I WANT TO TELL MY STORY.
THIS HAPPENED IN DECEMBER 2006.
5.12.06. I HAD A CHEST X-RAY. I was 16 years old. The radiologist told me to wait in the hallway. He came out and with such an unpleasant expression on his face and said: “Urgently go with the photo to Regional hospital in Timiryazevo! Gave me the address. He didn’t send me to the pediatrician for an appointment with pictures and went there straight away without explanation. I don't like your pictures." Of course, I was scared, I told my mother everything, and my mother, without telling me anything either, sent me on my way.
That's when the whole nightmare began!...
I arrive at the address that the radiologist told me. There were many buildings there. And somehow it didn’t seem like a hospital! I started looking for someone. On the way I met a doctor. She took my pictures, looked at them and………I was immediately taken to the isolation ward! I didn’t expect it and thought about going home later. I arrived without bags with things and all that. But no! I ended up there for 7 whole months!!!……….
I spent my whole life there. It's like I've been to hell! I was given injections for 6 months in a row, 2 times a day, given 7-10 tablets at a time before each meal! L
One day they called me on my phone and said that the whole school was discussing me. Everyone began to be afraid of me. And when, after 3 months in the hospital, a sputum analysis showed that I was not contagious, they began to let me go home for the weekend! My friends were completely forbidden by their parents to be friends with me......
I’ll shorten my story a little so you don’t get bored.
So here it is. I was discharged on July 25, 2007. They told me to follow up with a TB doctor for 1 year (if I’m not mistaken) and continue taking the pills for about 6 months. By the way, my whole family was also screwed. Some were forced to take pills for prevention. Someone was given a manta ray and everything showed well, and the x-ray also showed that everything was normal for everyone. By the way, they didn’t even give me manta before hospitalization!!!
A year later, I had a repeat x-ray, but not at the Loskutovsky Central Regional Hospital, from where I (as if) went to the dispensary with tuberculosis, but at the Tomsk Regional Clinical Hospital, where the local therapist sent me. X-ray showed an arteriovenous fistula on the right. Shown Comp. Tomography and consultation with a hematologist. A CT scan showed that I have a retention cyst of the middle lobe of the right. lung I was sent for a consultation with a pulmologist at the OKB.
There they offered me an operation. I agreed. My final diagnosis before surgery was: Congenital hypoplasia of the middle lobe of the right. lung Bronchiectasis of the middle lobe, Emphysema of the middle lobe, Local pneumofibrosis.
I had a hard time with the operation. On Friday morning I was operated on, and on Sunday evening I just came to my senses. I was in intensive care for three days. I went through 2 bronchoscopy - a most unpleasant procedure.
After the operation, my doctor told me that I never had any tuberculosis, so post-tuberculosis scars should have remained. But they were not found on me. How lucky was I not to get infected in an isolation ward with open tuberculosis patients. Thank God! After discharge, I already wanted to file a lawsuit for medical error, but when I arrived in Tomsk to see a phthisiatrician on the street. Kuznetsova for pictures and a card and saying that I need all the documents and pictures for the pulmonologist, to which they told me: “And your pictures are in the archive.” I asked to bring them from there. To which they answered me: “If they are in the archive, then they have already been burned!” And after some time I found out that all the photographs are stored in the archive for 5 years, and at that time not even 2 years had passed!
Now I'm 25, I already have two children. Two beautiful, obedient daughters, loving husband. But...my lung problems have not left me yet. On July 3, 2015, I will have a spiral computed tomography scan. I've been waiting for this line for 3 months. The pulmonologist jokingly said: “SO you can die”...
Now according to the x-ray I have doubts pulmonary fibrosis. I'll hope for the best. After all this, I entered medical school, because I decided that now I would not completely trust doctors, but only myself and my knowledge. It still turns me inside out when I remember those times, and sometimes I can’t sleep at night. They planted my organs, my liver and kidneys are no longer the same, and a whole bunch of other problems... That’s how this chemotherapy “benefited” me! And by the way, in the extract from the tuberculosis dispensary it was written that I had a computer done there. Tomography! And in it the conclusion is LYMPHOGRANULOMATOSIS!, i.e. cancer!!! And our most wonderful pediatrician didn’t say anything after reading the discharge, and neither did the phthisiatrician! In short, everyone has been screwed!!!
Victims of medical errors, of which there are more in the world than it seems, most often do not know how to defend their innocence and achieve an adequate punishment for the person in the gown, who not only failed expectations, but also demonstrated dishonesty, self-confidence or ignorance.
The punishment for “medical error” as such is not defined by law; there are several articles of the criminal code on this subject. But it’s not so easy to bring to justice a doctor who ruined someone’s life. At a minimum, independent expertise and persistent patience are required.
Fear of visiting a doctor's office is a completely healthy phenomenon. It is worse if this fear is well founded, when patients know from the media about the terrible mistakes that occur in hospitals around the world - even in developed countries with the best devices and high incomes for doctors. Many people have heard stories about medical instruments forgotten by specialists in the bodies of patients. Every year, similar embarrassments, and even misfortunes, happen to tens of thousands of inhabitants of the Earth who have had the misfortune of ending up in a hospital, at any level. There are other medical errors in surgery and beyond, leading to disability or death of a patient who falls into the hands of an errant specialist.
Approximately every third medical error causes complications for the patient’s health and well-being. In addition, in Russia at least two patients die every day due to such errors, and some social activists claim that up to 50 thousand a year (in America - up to 250 thousand, if that).
Such cases could be described as comical if they were fixable. Not a single decent hospital wants to spoil its reputation with operations performed at the wrong address. However, even with strict control and protocols here and there, surgeons make mistakes that should never happen. For example, in one of the US clinics, biopsy samples were once mixed up in the laboratory prostate gland, and, therefore, a sick client with a healthy one. As a result, the patient, who lived without any hint of cancer, had his entire healthy prostate removed by surgeons. This is a complex and responsible procedure. Meanwhile, the real cancer patient was sent home, unaware of his true diagnosis.
In another overseas case, a patient died from a pathological process in the lung after an intern inserted a breathing tube into the wrong place in a seriously ill patient.
Errors in patient selection make up, according to a number of studies, up to 0.5% of all medical errors in question.
Among the most nightmarish examples of patient “switching” is the story of 41-year-old Colleen Burns, who received a head injury in a fall and woke up on the operating table a minute before... the removal of internal organs by surgeons. The fanatics inevitably not only confused the patients, but also confused a living person under sedatives with a lifeless body. Fortunately, the operation was stopped in time, and the doctors remembered the curious incident for the rest of their lives. It happened in 2009 in New York state. The doctors were fined $22,000 for dangerous negligence, but could not explain why this happened. Well, after 11 months, Mrs. Burns still committed suicide by swallowing pills, despite her three daughters.
Errors during blood transfusion
It is believed that every tenth surgical operation in a hospital setting is accompanied by a blood transfusion, of which millions are performed annually. The procedure seems to be routine, but there is also room for medical mistakes, and very dangerous ones at that.
According to statistics, out of 10 thousand packages of donated blood, at least one will contain the wrong blood that is indicated on the label. Many tens of thousands of transfusion errors occur every year, with every 500th patient dying. Blood may be incorrectly signed during collection, samples may be mixed up in the laboratory, data may be entered incorrectly into the computer, etc. It also happens that the immune system the patient refuses to accept foreign blood components or.
In 2013, in St. Petersburg, Russia, a one-year-old girl, trying to taste everything, swallowed 6 magnets from an “educational” toy, so the baby needed emergency surgery, during which the patient’s condition became very serious. Due to anemia, the girl was urgently transfused with red blood cells from... an HIV-positive donor, dooming the child to long and expensive treatment. It turned out that the head of the department received a message that the blood was contagious, but he initially ignored it. By the time the error was discovered, the child had been given 50 ml of dangerous liquid. A similar high-profile case with viruses in donor blood occurred in 2006 in Kostroma. The reason is carelessness.
Air embolism
Atmospheric air, without which a person cannot live, becomes a cause of death in a hospital environment if it enters the bloodstream. In this case, a venous air embolism develops - special case gas embolism. Emboli are defined as gas bubbles that can block the work of circulatory system. In modern surgery, air embolism is a rare phenomenon, but it is observed more often than we would like. Gas embolism of the blood causes pulmonary embolism, when the vessels of the lungs suffer from air “plugs”. Death from pulmonary embolism is one of the leading preventable hospital deaths.
The mortality rate from air bubbles entering a patient's vein through a catheter reaches 30 percent. Even those who survive often remain disabled for life. Consequences include permanent brain damage. What is especially frightening is that air embolism can occur during routine surgical procedures, making them deadly. For example, during dental prosthetics. In 1987, a certain dentist, while “doing teeth” on clients, managed to let air into the blood of five of them. Three victims, turning blue, died right in the office from a heart attack. The problem turned out to be the hollow drill of the drill, which supplied the patients’ bloodstream with a mixture of water and air. The clients had little time to feel anything, because they were under anesthesia - general or local.
Incorrect surgical operations
It happens that victims of medical errors go to court, bringing would-be doctors to justice. In 25%, it concerns cases where patients undergo operations that are not indicated for them. Even in America, the number of such lawsuits exceeds a hundred per year and successful resolution problems, the compensation received by the plaintiff averages 232 thousand dollars (reaching 7 million).
Despite all the procedures designed to eliminate gross mistakes by surgeons, incorrect operations happen more often than one might think. For example, one woman had her fallopian tube removed instead of her appendix, and another patient had heart surgery that he did not need at all. One of the most terrible cases occurred in 2011, when a 32-year-old resident of England, who was carrying her fourth child and suffered from appendicitis, had her right ovary removed instead of her appendix. The operation was performed by a young surgeon of Pakistani origin, and his senior colleague and mentor chose to go home (early). The inflamed appendix did not go away; after 3 weeks the woman was again admitted to the hospital with abdominal pain. It was then that doctors from Romford learned about the mistake of the inexperienced doctor. Four days later, the patient gave birth to a still premature baby; her appendix was removed, but then she died on the operating table from multiple organ failure, which was caused by blood poisoning.
Wrong medications or incorrect dosage
People tend to believe that the medicine the doctor prescribes is the medicine they need. the right dosage. Yet millions of people are given incorrect prescriptions every day. Let's say that Americans annually purchase more than three billion recipes, of which 51.5 million contain errors. That is, if a pharmacy processes 250 medical orders per day, then four of them will be incorrect. This phenomenon is doubly dangerous. Firstly, the patient may receive a harmful drug that he does not need; secondly, he will not get what he really needs.
Mistakes with prescription drugs occur in pharmacies and clinics. One day, a nurse accidentally poisoned a pair of twins who were born prematurely - at 27 weeks of pregnancy - with morphine. The boys were injected with lethal doses of the drug - 650-800 micrograms, when only 50-100 micrograms were supposed to be injected. The disaster happened in 2010.
In another case, a 79-year-old pensioner on dialysis was given pancuronium bromide instead of an antacid. Pancuronium is a paralyzing substance used for complex operations or lethal injections, but my grandfather needed an antacid for heartburn. The nurse mixed up the packaging. After 30 minutes, the patient became unresponsive and died from cardiac arrest.
In 2009, in Kazakhstan, an 85-year-old patient who had suffered a myocardial infarction was administered a cardiac drug, corglycone, by a nurse at a dose ten times higher than that prescribed by the doctor. She allegedly imagined that the ampoules indicated a lower dosage. The old woman began to suffer and by the time the ambulance arrived she was already dead. The health worker, who made a fatal mistake, resigned from the clinic of her own free will - with a diploma and a “clean” work record.
Hospital infections and dirty medical equipment
Usually people go to the hospital to get rid of illnesses, not suspecting that hospitals themselves are a source of illnesses and infections. They are hidden in unsterile instruments and devices, on the unwashed hands of staff. So, rare disease Creutzfeldt-Jakob, fraught with brain destruction (“mad cow disease”) was transmitted to dozens of patients by American neurosurgeons in 2012-2014. The reason is insufficient sterilization of surgical instruments used in the treatment of carriers of a dangerous disease.
Statistics say that every 25th hospital patient becomes a victim of a hospital infection. Hundreds of thousands of people die from such diseases every year. Having been in a hospital bed, they risk acquiring pneumonia first, followed by inflammation on the list urethra, infectious diseases of the digestive system, primary infections of the circulatory system (from dirty catheters).
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