Quote:
Originally Posted by epitome
Some states got smart with tort reform, but it needs to become a nationwide thing. Doctors should not have to be afraid of a lawsuit in order to treat you or even go with their gut. They are professionals, after all.
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Actually, it's not "smart" at all considering how most of the healthcare industry is structured.
A number of years back I would have the occasional episode where my heart would flip into v-fib typically requiring cardioversion to resolve it. Anyway, the first few times it happened, when I was sitting in the hospital while they tried their various drug cocktails before finally giving way to the cardioversion they almost injected me with the wrong stuff multiple times in different visits. Why? Because they have a number of these newbies, interns, whatever who are always in some level of training. If the lead DR/nurse would not have caught them before injection, it could have been very serious.
While that is one instance, there have been plenty of other times where they give me two medicines to treat something you should not be mixing together. As I have had this happen before where you have a bad reaction to some pills mixed, I am always careful to do the research before I take anything to prevent this. You would think a DR would know this, but often times myself or the pharmacist will catch it and need to inform the DR to get an alternative.
Keep in mind here, most of my issues are fairly non-serious, but think about people who have real serious health issues going on and if these sort of things happen at the hospital, DR's office, whatever.
Although I never really had a strong position one way or the other in regards to tort reform and if people are abusing the system, I can tell you in the last 10 years since I have had to used my healthcare more often, that I have come to believe that many (not all) of those lawsuits are most likely justified especially considering some of my own experiences with different hospitals, DR's, and various treatments to different issues.
While medicine is a science and not an absolute, if you fuck up you should have to pay for it as you're dealing with a person's life and last I checked, you only had
one of them. It's the most precious gift you have in this world. Plan accordingly.
