Malpractice In The Healthcare Field

Malpractice has greatly affected the healthcare field by causing people to not want to seek help. If a case of malpractice has been heard at a hospital near a person, it makes them reluctant to go and seek medical aid. The thought of negligence or malpractice makes a patient anxious when dealing with doctors or anyone who is meant to aid a person with their health needs. Many Americans today are already unable to afford regular health care but when an extra malpractice cost is added in, it begins to get unbearable. The added cost is because the chance of malpractice is seen as more common occurrence so people in turn, have to pay just incase seeing as they would get millions of dollars in court should they need to. Other times, a premium may be too high for a doctor to pay so they will move to a place with a more manageable premium. Finally, there is defensive medicine. This is when doctors order more than necessary medicines to protect themselves from being …show more content…
Doctor Robert Ricketson was doing a spinal cord surgery when he realized the rods that were needed to be inserted in his patients back were unavailable and the patient had a lot of blood loss. Instead of informing someone, he cut a screwdriver to the required size and inserted it into the patient's back. The screw driver ended up breaking while in the patient's back, and two years later died related to the screw driver incident due to complications. The medico was found 65 percent guilty/liable and the Hilo Medical center 35 percent liable. Another example is when a doctor was having “personal problems”. While doing testicular surgery, the doctor angrily cut a man’s penis into pieces because he accidentally cut his urinary chanel. He was aggravated and lost his temper so he decided to cut the man's penis off of his patient and then proceeded to cut it into pieces. Then he left the pieces on the table and left the operating