Medical Mistakes Occur Due To Poor Doctor-Patient Communication
A recent study reveals that many medical mistakes occur because physicians are not listening to their patients. In addition to wrong-site surgeries, many errors take place simply because physicians lack good doctor-patient communication skills.
According to an elective surgery mistake study that evaluated ways to reduce errors in elective surgeries, outcomes would improve if doctors both educated their patients more about the risks of a particular surgery and listened better to their patients' needs and medical conditions.
Not all bad outcomes constitute medical malpractice, but if you have had a surgery and suffer a worse than expected outcome, ask yourself the following questions:
• Is your condition worse after the treatment?
• Are your symptoms typically associated with the medical procedure you underwent?
• Did you doctor adequately explain the symptoms before or after the treatment?
Where you are not satisfied with the answers you receive, or believe that you have been harmed as the result of a procedure, we encourage you to speak to a Hawaii medical malpractice attorney.
The study indicates a high incidence of unwanted surgeries for back pain and lumpectomies for early stage breast cancer. A co-author of the study notes, “giving a patient treatment he doesn’t want is as much an error as wrong site surgery.”
For more information, or if you believe you have been harmed by any medical mistake or error, please contact the dedicated Hawaii medical malpractice lawyers at Bostwick & Peterson, LLP.
