Tag Archives: medical orders mislaid

The importance of monitoring medical care for your loved ones

You may think that because you have carefully selected the best hospital and the finest doctors to operate on you that you can leave the treatment in their hands. You may be in for a rude surprise.

This is not a rant about the state of medical care in the 21st Century. It is a careful assessment of the realities of making sure that you or your loved one comes through a major operation with as few difficulties as possible.

No system is infallible and people forget to write things down or to send vital records or to install vital equipment properly.

The patient and those accompanying the patient need to take responsibility for being informed. You must ask questions about anything that doesn’t make sense to you.

So, even if your operation is done perfectly, the anesthesiologist may not have duplicated what the surgeon requested, your nurses may not have received the information needed to administer the proper drugs and medication, the incredibly complex and effective drug administering system may not have been plugged in to the electrical outlets, and the chilling system for your injured area may not have been connected properly.

I have seen all of this and more in this past week in the best hospital I have ever seen. The staff was friendly, the hospital was first rate, the procedures had more checks and balances than I have ever seen before, but things did drop through the cracks and I was able to bring them to someone’s attention before things got too far out of hand because I knew what to watch for.

Continue reading after the jump for some of the errors I have seen in five different hospitals:

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