A recent Consumer Reports article describes a link between respectful treatment by health care works and fewer preventable medical errors. Unfortunately the converse is true: disrespectful doctors and nurses make more medical errors causing harm.
The "Standard of Care" is something a jury decides, including not only evidence of how doctors in Washington state actually practice, but also what experts for both sides say is the standard.
Technology has the potential to improve health care, but it also carries with it a number of risks to patient safety.
Modern medicine has solved many problems, but it hasn’t yet solved hospital-acquired infections. Unfortunately for people harmed by such infections, it is very difficult to bring a claim for injury.
University of Washington Medical Center Ranked 11th Among U.S. Hospitals, but malpractice still occurs due to the nature of UW as a teaching hospital, and system errors including failures to follow up on care, among other things.
All health care facilities are, or soon will be, required to maintain a patient’s medical records in electronic form. Almost all hospitals currently use EMR systems. Several U.S. companies are marketing and installing these systems. Using them has helped avoid some problems of hand-written charts, but also has created entirely new problems.
In the last several years, there has been a huge increase in the number of surgeries performed with robotic devices, usually manufactured by one company that has aggressively marketed them to doctors and hospitals.
In modern hospitals the health care providers rely more and more on machines. A patient’s well-being is maintained through monitoring devices (picture the screen above the patient’s bed showing a pulse), breathing-assistance machines, and drug dispensing methods. The failure of any of these devices, or a malfunction, can adversely affect the patient’s well-being or even cause a death.
