Anesthesia is an extremely important part of many medical procedures. It helps patients stay out of pain so that doctors and nurses can do their jobs. However, as this blog has discussed in our previous post, anesthesia use is not without risks. In some cases, anesthesia can cause serious health problems or death. While this medication can cause issues, these problems often arise because of a doctor error.
In fact, according to some studies, medication errors happen for a variety of reasons. Human error in administering anesthesia is the largest cause of medication errors. Studies have shown that human error is responsible for anesthesia errors in between 65 and 87 percent of cases with negative outcomes.
These human errors can be blamed on a variety of factors. Inadequate experience caused errors in 16 percent of cases, whereas, inadequate or problematic equipment caused issues in 9.3 percent of cases. When the mistakes occurred in an operating room, other risk factors were identified. These included a lack of staff, inattention, fatigue, poor communication and haste.
Other factors that have caused medication errors have included lack of drug knowledge, the high-stress environment and frequent changes to the drugs or doses given to a person. In many cases, these medication and anesthesia errors are the result of a medical professional’s error.
When a doctor error or nursing error causes anesthesia issues, the doctor can be held responsible. A medical malpractice suit can help to hold the doctor responsible for the damages caused by the accident. An attorney can help people understand these rights when they have been injured by a medication error.