Losing My Leg To A Medical Error Summary

Frederick S. Southwick (2013), a professor of medicine at the University of Florida, is the author of “Losing My Leg to a Medical Error.” In this article, a man, I will refer to as patient X, had pain in his left calf which initiated him to be admitted to the hospital to have an amputation procedure done above the left knee. Two months after continuous pain he was finally admitted to the hospital to receive an amputation above his left knee. The physician in charge of his case was unsure why blood flow was cut off to his lower left extremity because the patient had never smoked, didn’t have diabetes or low cholesterol and there was no evidence for atherosclerosis, the hardening of arteries. In 1995, the patient had surgery done on his left …show more content…
A preventable medical error could include things like not properly diagnosing a patient’s disease, infection, behavior or injury. The doctor’s inability to remove the pressurized cup during the procedure in a timely fashion resulted in the patient losing his leg and having to attend various sessions of physical therapy for the remainder of his life. This incident could have been avoided due to the error caused by the doctor not remembering a crucial part of the surgery. Some possible causes of this error may have been due to the physician having numerous different things to take care of not having a clear mind while performing the surgery. There may have been complications in the procedure itself making the procedure last longer, leaving the doctor to forget or delay the removal of the cuff. Also, some other possible causes of error could include not communicating properly, the flow of patient information was not relayed correctly, the transfer of knowledge among each of the staff members was not kept constant, the staff may have changed shifts not being aware of the patient’s file, and technical