Military Medical Malpractice: Seeking Recourse

[babylonsister]

Military Medical Malpractice: Seeking Recourse
By Walter F. Roche Jr.
The Los Angeles Times

Sunday 20 April 2008


Outrage over a recent spate of incidents spurs fresh efforts to overturn the Feres doctrine, a 1950 Supreme Court decision denying active-duty service members the right to sue over medical errors.

Minutes after routine surgery for acute appendicitis in October 2003, Staff Sgt. Dean Witt, 25, was being moved to a recovery room at a Northern California military hospital when he gasped and stopped breathing.

A student nurse assisting an understaffed anesthesia team tried to resuscitate Witt and failed. Inexplicably, Witt's gurney was wheeled into a pediatric area. Lifesaving devices sized for children, not a 175-pound adult, proved useless, according to an internal report on the incident.

Medical personnel at David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base screamed at each other. A double dose of a powerful stimulant was mistakenly administered. When a breathing tube was finally inserted, it was misdirected, uselessly pumping air into the patient's stomach. Errors compounded errors and delays multiplied.

By the time a breathing tube finally was inserted correctly, Witt had devastating brain damage. Three months later, he was removed from life support and died. Witt, who grew up in Oroville, Calif., left behind a wife and two children, including a 4-month-old son.

"This medical incident was due to an avoidable error," concluded an unpublished internal report, a copy of which was reviewed by The Times.

more...

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042008C.shtml

[OhioChick]

1. Wow...

I wasn't aware that active duty service members had no recourse when it came to medical malpractice. That's wrong on so many levels.

That poor man......and his family. :(

[knitter4democracy]

2. "an avoidable error"?! There were several that I counted.

Almost all of those were avoidable. The first mistake was not staffing anesthesiology well enough. They're the ones in charge of codes in surgery and post-op. Whoever that anesthesiologist was, though, couldn't run a code at all. The doctor in charge is in charge, no yelling, no wheeling to peds, no giving the wrong dose. None of that. He needs to be sanctioned and go through an M&M (do they do that in the military hospitals like they do in civilian ones), and I think he should be sued, along with the hospital administrators.