Medical Malpractice Attorneys:
Fatal Emergency Room Errors

serving Washington, D.C., Maryland, & Virginia

We visit the emergency room when life is in peril, but many medical emergencies can be reversed with timely treatment. Just as emergency treatment can save lives, mistakes in the emergency room can just as easily kill. With substandard treatment, even a minor emergency can turn deadly.

Emergency room errors which can lead to wrongful death include:

• Failure to fully evaluate a patient
• Failure to monitor a patient
• Partial treatment
• Delayed treatment
• Refusal to treat
• Diagnostic error
• Medication errors
• Surgical errors

The emergency room is a fast paced, high stress environment where errors can easily occur. For this reason, hospitals must maintain very clear and strict policies to keep things running as smoothly and safely as possible, and minimize the potential for human error. Fatal emergency room errors are often the result of hospital negligence or wrongdoing including:

• Unsanitary conditions
• Unethical or illegal intake and treatment policies
• Understaffing
• Inadequate training
• Poor record keeping procedures
• Poor patient tracking procedures
• Inadequate medication administration procedures
• Inadequate facilities

Diagnostic error leading to wrongful death

Failure to diagnose a life-threatening condition or event often leads to a patient being discharged without treatment. The condition can continue to get worse, or may reoccur once the patient has left the hospital and can quickly become fatal. Delayed diagnosis means that treatment may be delayed until it is too late. A misdiagnosis can become fatal due to failure to treat the real problem or when the improper treatment administered causes the original condition to worsen.

Conditions involved in fatal diagnostic error include:

• Heart attack
• Stroke
• Appendicitis
• Pancreatitis
• Brain injury
• Pulmonary embolism

Medication errors

Medication errors can be fatal, even when the original problem was not serious. Fatal medication errors in emergency rooms can include:

• Overdose
• Allergic reactions
• Drug interactions
• Wrong medication
• Administration to the wrong patient
• Administration of pain medication to patients who are intoxicated

Unsanitary conditions

The need to move quickly in an emergency room is no excuse for using dirty instruments, failing to clean areas in between patients, or skipping hand washing, but it happens.

Unsanitary conditions can lead to the infection of a wound or surgical site or to disease transmission between patients. Both can lead to wrongful death.

Discrimination

Possibly the most heartbreaking, and definitely the most avoidable type of fatal emergency room error is discrimination against patients who cannot prove their ability to pay, resulting in delayed treatment, incomplete treatment, or flat out refusal to treat.

The practice is illegal, but that does not prevent it from happening. Hospitals have different ways of shirking their responsibility to stabilize patients needing emergency care:

• Sending the patient to a different hospital
• Providing partial, but inadequate treatment
• Delaying treatment for an unreasonable amount of time
• Refusing to examine or provide any treatment without proof of insurance

If a loved one in your family has died as a result of what you believe is a wrongful death in Maryland, Washington DC, or Virginia, contact our personal injury attorneys at the law offices of Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata, & Siegel P.C. The wrongful death lawyers at Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata, & Siegel P.C. will examine your case and consult with you to determine what damages may be entitled to recover at no cost to you.

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