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   XPost: alt.health, soc.culture.usa   
   From: Bluerhymer@aol.com   
      
   Medical Mistakes In Emergency Rooms A Troubling Problem   
   April 3, 2012 ,   
   by Kroot Law, LLC   
      
   Thousands of patients go to emergency rooms every day in the US. Due   
   to a variety of problems including understaffing, many emergency   
   departments are overcrowded and chaotic. Based on a New York area   
   survey of doctors from February 2007, many patients have died because   
   of delays in receiving urgently needed medical treatment. In some   
   instances, these emergency room wrongful deaths led to expensive   
   medical malpractice lawsuits, not to mention unnecessary heartache for   
   many families.   
      
   Delayed treatment and improper treatment by emergency rooms is not a   
   problem unique to any one state. Just recently, a Florida jury   
   returned a multi-million dollar verdict after an emergency room   
   department failed to timely treat a young man's life threatening   
   condition that began with a debilitating headache. The young man   
   waited in the emergency room for over five hours in excruciating pain   
   before any medical care was provided. By the time doctors diagnosed   
   him with a brain herniation, a side effect of high intracranial   
   pressure, and sent him for surgery, it was too late. His family filed   
   a medical malpractice lawsuit against the hospital. The jury agreed   
   with the family, finding the hospital was negligently in failing to   
   timely diagnose and treat the man's brain herniation.   
      
   As many Americans can attest from personal experience, waiting in an   
   emergency room to receive treatment often takes several hours.   
   According to a 2005 study, the average emergency room wait time in   
   Arizona was five hours. Iowa had among the shortest wait time at 2.3   
   hours. An inspection of Los Angeles area hospitals found that the   
   average hospital was at 116% capacity. As these and other studies   
   show, many US emergency rooms are overworked and understaffed. This is   
   a recipe for needless medical mistakes, unnecessary deaths, and costly   
   medical malpractice lawsuits.   
      
   Another reason for medical errors in emergency rooms is the large   
   portion of residents, or doctors in training, who learn on the job   
   while treating patients in emergency departments. Although residents   
   are technically supervised by attending physicians, this does not   
   always occur particularly when the emergency department is very busy.   
   When inexperienced doctors are asked to provide urgent medical care in   
   an overcrowded emergency room, some patients will receive substandard   
   care which, unfortunately, can result in deadly medical mistakes.   
      
   Sources Used:   
      
   Wikipedia, Emergency Department, April 3, 2012.   
   Orlando Medical Malpractice Lawyer   
      
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