Homicide in the ER?
I think this ruling sets a bad precedent.
A woman dies of a heart attack in the waiting room of an emergency department, and her death is ruled a homicide by a "coroner's jury."
All the details haven't been released, but it's a huge leap from medical negligence to homicide in my opinion.
UPDATE: Details of the patient's ER visit are here and here.
Apparently an ECG was not done in triage.
More stories of deaths related to ER overcrowding here:
A woman dies of a heart attack in the waiting room of an emergency department, and her death is ruled a homicide by a "coroner's jury."
All the details haven't been released, but it's a huge leap from medical negligence to homicide in my opinion.
UPDATE: Details of the patient's ER visit are here and here.
Apparently an ECG was not done in triage.
More stories of deaths related to ER overcrowding here:
"My emergency department was crowded with patients awaiting inpatient beds. A patient came in with chest pain, and no beds were available. While awaiting a bed, the patient collapsed and died of a heart attack in the waiting room. The family sued.Are those cases "homicide" too? Obviously not.
A 50-year-old man came to an already overcrowded emergency department complaining of chest pain. The initial EKG showed no signs of heart attack. He had to sit in the waiting room because no beds were available. His pain worsened and his primary care physician met him in the waiting room and waited with him. He arrested in the waiting room and died while waiting for a bed.
A young man about 30 came to my emergency room late in the evening with fever and malaise for the past two days. He never registered, but asked how long the wait was. We will never know what exactly was said, however he declined the option to be seen when he heard how long the time would be, and left. The following day he was dead.
A 10-year old boy in Arizona had a severe asthma attack and couldn't breathe. An ambulance was called, but all the hospitals near his home were full and on diversion, including two children's hospitals. The closest open hospital did not admit children, but opened to take him, even though it was also overwhelmed. While waiting for a treatment room to open up, the child waited in the hallway on the ambulance gurney for several minutes. He died in the hallway, before he could be seen by even a nurse, because all the staff were overwhelmed caring for other critically ill patients."
Labels: ER
posted by scalpel at 2:27 PM
8 Comments:
I see this as a huge malpractice case, but how is this a homicide? Thanks for posting the story. It will be interesting to see how this turns out.
Without knowing the specific details of this case, I can still say that given the facts presented in the article this outcome could have happened on any night that I have ever worked in the ER over my 10 years of practice.
Nobody wants to make any patient wait for two hours to be seen, particularly those with chest pain. But sometimes they must, and do, wait even longer than that.
If the patients present to triage faster than the patients in the ER can be discharged ot admitted, then they back up in the waiting room. It happens every day in every ER.
Whose fault is it? The hospital's? The triage nurse's? The physician on duty when the patient checked in? The physician who came on duty as the patient died? The one who ran the code?
If that is homocide then I quit! And every ER nurse and doctor should quit as well. Destroy the system completely.
I agree with anonymous: it's a world gone mad. An error, yes; a horrible outcome, of course. But murder??? The attorney, of course, is high fiving himself, or perhaps some other form of using the five for pleasure. But the system reels...
The fault lies in that the number of health practitioners is kept artificially low. The hell to which residents are subjected is proof enough. Not enough Docs. If there were you wouldn't have to work 36 hours straight.
Although I agree there are times when we could use another doc on duty, by far the most important factor in ER overcrowding is the availability of inpatient beds. Which is often dependent on the availability of nurses to staff the inpatient units.
It sets a horrible precedent.
It is a blatant malpractice case but certainly not a homicide.
How many illegal aliens and public-assistance recipients were in the ER for non-serious issues on those occasions?
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