When it comes to taking medications or giving medications, it’s a matter of being right in order to avoid potentially disastrous consequences that would lead to a medical malpractice lawsuit.
It really shouldn’t be asking too much to get the right medications when a patient is in a hospital or other clinical setting where medical treatment is being carried out. After all, that would be a reasonable expectation of the patient. Patients rely on caregivers to look out for them and not harm them by giving them something that either produces a bad reaction or ends up causing the patient’s death. Unfortunately, medication errors are far too common and in order to avoid them, health care professionals must take steps to monitor their actions or face a potential Cleveland medical malpractice lawsuit.
Generally speaking there are at least five things, or five rights that patients should expect from medical personnel. The first thing is that the patient is correctly identified. While this may sound like a fairly straightforward job, those who perform it typically also answer phones, screen calls, take refill information, sign in co-pays and other miscellaneous distracting duties. If this causes negligence on the part of the medical intake person, they may face a Cleveland medical malpractice suit.
Consider the ramifications if the patient is initially not identified properly. This could mean the wrong treatment, wrong surgery, wrong diagnosis or a multitude of other errors all compounded by the patient being given the wrong name, charts and other vital medical information. This admittedly is more of a problem on admission to the hospital if the patient is not able to communicate articulately.
A patient’s second well deserved right is that they get the correct drug. Unfortunately this is a real concern in many health care settings, as drugs are often prescribed, handed out and given to patients without any information about their potential allergies, their age, height, weight, lab results, actual clinical condition or diagnosis. This is a recipe for disaster.
Add to this physicians who write faster than they think and hand out prescriptions that defy all logic with creative names for drugs they can’t recall and doses that are, at best, questionable. Unfortunately, there isn’t always a check and balance system in place to keep track of what patient gets what drugs when everyone is under the gun to care for more patients than there are beds. The possibility of negligence in a hospital or other clinical setting may be very high given the overburdened health system, something a Cleveland medical malpractice lawyer knows well.
Right number three deals with getting the right dose of a medication. This is a particularly difficult area, as trying to set the right dose for the patient is mostly done by an educated guess based on age, height, weight, what other drugs the person is taking and any known allergies. The art of different dosing for each patient is not one that everyone in health care settings understands well enough. Consider the case of a nurse crushing a time release capsule for a senior and finding out later crushing the tablet releases the whole dose at once with dreadful consequences.
Along with the right dose of medication comes patient right number four, the right route to administer the medication. In most instances, giving a pill or liquid is the easiest, safest and most cost effective route. However, there are other methods of administration such as intravenous, intradermal, subcutaneous and intramuscular that have the potential to go off the rails if done incorrectly. Other even more tricky methods of giving a drug include intracardiac, intrapleural, intraspinal, intraarticular and intrathecal. These are particularly dangerous routes of administration of a drug, as once the drug is injected there is no way to get it back.
Patient right number five relates to getting the right medication at the right time. If the required dose is delayed or forgotten, this becomes a medication error with the potential to cause significant problems such as making up doses and giving them too close together.
For a violation of patient’s rights, it is critical to speak with a Cleveland medical malpractice attorney to ensure justice is served.
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