Posts Tagged ‘lawsuits’

In December 2008, the Ecri Institute released it second annual report on the top 10 technology hazards that should be on every hospital’s list of safety concerns for medical-device use.  The Ecri Institute conducts patient-safety research and investigates medical-device incidents.   Five of the hazards on the list are new. However, all of the five hazards dropped from the list are still seen as “significant concerns.”  The five new hazards just caused more problems in the past year, including retained devices and air embolism from contrast media injectors, causing them to placed on the list. 

The top 10 technology hazards are listed in order as follows:

1.  Alarm hazards
2. Injuries from needle sticks and other sharp objects
3. Air embolism from contrast media injectors
4. Retained devices and unretrieved fragments left in patients
5. Surgical fires
6. Anesthesia hazards due to inadequate pre-use inspection
7. Misleading displays
8. CT radiation dose
9. MR imaging burns
10. Fiberoptic light-source burns
     

While some problems involve a defective medical device, it tends to be inexperience and/or lack of knowledge on the user’s part that causes these devices to be hazardous.  Few people read the manual. If devices are used safely, fewer incidents would occur.  Every participant in the chain during the process has a responsibility to prevent a problem from arising. If you have been a victim of one of these technology hazards or any other technology, you may have a medical malpractice or hospital negligence lawsuit and may be entitled to a medical malpractice settlement.  You should contact a medical malpractice lawyer today for more information.

Many studies are done on the side effects of drugs before they are released to the market to properly inform patients of the potential side effects.  However, these studies often do not incorporate studies on drug-drug interactions, which are the effect of using a particular medication in combination with several other drugs that a patient is already taking.  Not only can these medications cause their own side effects, they can have additional and sometimes irregular side effects when taken with other drugs.

In the United Kingdom, fifteen percent of its residents over 75 years of age take five or more drugs on a daily basis.  People in nursing homes take an average of six to eight medicines a day.  In the United States, forty percent of people over the age of 65 take five or more drugs on a daily basis.  The number of drugs prescribed to people is on a rise, especially in western European countries.  While the reasons for prescribing more drugs are done to effectively treat older people, there are sometimes other less respectable reasons, such as more drug marketing by drug companies disguised as “disease awareness” campaigns.  Often, drugs are not needed to treat these “diseases” and prescriptions written for these purpose are unnecessary and can even lead to dangerous interactions with other necessary drugs patients are taking.

Various studies show that about five percent of hospital admissions in Europe and the U.S. are due to adverse reactions caused by two or more drugs patients are taking.  In addition, five to ten percent of hospital patients have additional drug reactions when being hospitalized, resulting in prolonged stays and inevitably higher hospital bills.  Another unfortunate reality is that even with drugs that do not have any drug-drug interactions, the patient might stop taking a drug without informing the doctor, because all of the drugs they are taking have cumulative side effects that the patient wants to avoid.  Doctors may prescribe even higher and often unnecessary doses because they think the lower doses are not working.  In addition, doctors themselves are often not aware of the cumulative side effects that patients can have by taking multiple drugs, causing the patients to suffer any unnecessary side effects.

In short, some patient advocates argue that compliance with prescribed doses is a precursor to effective treatment but if you have adverse reactions or are concerned about them, consult your doctor or pharmacist.  If you are injured by a dangerous drug or think you are the victim of medical negligence, contact a medical malpractice lawyer.

Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/34019120-498b-11de-9e19-00144feabdc0.html

Medication adherence, which is really the extent to which patients take medication as prescribed by their doctors, is important to the medication’s effectiveness to cure and treat the particular illness.  Poor medication adherence can have a particularly negative impact on the medication’s ability to treat many diseases, causing more severe complications from the illness and decreased quality of life for patients.   Many factors cause poor adherence; the most common ones being the inability to pay for medications, lack of belief that the treatment is necessary or helping, busy schedules, forgetfulness, and confusion about how and when to take the medication.

The Food Drug Administration recently published an article on its website, which discusses the importance of medication adherence and provides tips on how to take different types of medication correctly.  For example, when taking antibiotics, the FDA warns strict medication adherence is vital.  If antibiotics are not taken as prescribed by the doctor, a small number of bacteria is likely to survive and continue to replicate and become resistant to the antibiotics.  The same reasoning goes for the HIV virus.  When patients with AIDS skip or stop taking their prescribed medication, they might develop strains of HIV that are more resistant to the prescribed medication and even some medications that patients aren’t currently on.

The FDA advises people to communicate with their doctors or pharmacists if they are experiencing side effects of their prescribed medication and understand how long they need to take the medication.  Setting a daily routine to take medication, keeping medications in noticeable places, using daily dosing containers, and keeping written or computerized schedules are all good ways to help people remember to take their medication.

Ultimately, if there is ever an issue of negligence, consumers want to make sure it is medical negligence outside of their control and not negligence of their own.  Making sure you properly take medications, at least according to the FDA, is an important consumer health issue.