"W5: The fight for medical information after patients die"

1 W5: The fight for medical information after patients die - CTV News

It sounds a little bit too much like a conspiracy theory to me, but if it is not, this is scary. I would think that this doctor would have lost his license a long ago. Does this article even make any sense?
Thousands of mistakes are made every day by medical staff (docs, nursing, phlebotomy, radiology, etc...), the ones with fatal consequences usually end up in the media. This article is about a Canadian hospital and I'm surprised to hear that there is not more transparency there. In the States, a personal injury attorney would have subpoenaed the records and the mistake would be all over the news to help bias the case in favor of a big settlement.

The details seem sketchy at best. This "Tom" seems to have diagnosed the patient as having a PE based on s/s that can result from many conditions. And we don't know if he is a doctor, nurse, or the janitor that passed by the room as they were treating the patient.

This situation is a crying shame. Maybe the hospitals in Canada think that they don't owe the citizens there anything since they have socialized medicine...but their taxes pay for the hospitals. I agree that here in the States that would never have happened b/c a lawyer would've gotten all the records and the media would've been all over it. Also, it sounds like a PE...pain in leg (DVt)...then she became short of breath...classic sign of a PE...they should have done a CT of the chest. Her heart rate was rapid....treat the underlying cause...they couldn't get a blood pressure...what idiot gives verapamil when we can't even get a bp. I feel so sorry for this family. I hope Canada changes the laws so that more families can get the justice they deserve. And the nurses thinking the patient had a GI bleed and the doc giving Lovenox anyway is just another reason that docs should take nurse opinions into consideration (at least Heparin has an antidote).

wow. i am so sorry for both of these families. i do know that it seems that doctors have an unspoken rule to cover for one another and never speak ill of another physician under the premise that "except for the grace of god there go i."doctors are human, as are all members of the healthcare field. no matter how hard one tries or how much they care, we all make mistakes. until we can separate the person from the behavior or act and investigate the occurrence itself we all suffer. nurses are often caught in the web of horizontal violence. too quick to undermine one another and "eating their young" but to the opposite extreme, physicians will turn a deaf ear when they hear about another physicians indiscretion or outright error. one poster mentioned the idea of a conspiracy theory and in a way that is correct. the higher up the totem pole that medical people are and the longer and more in-depth the education then the more it seems like they turn their head. if in house incident reporting could truly be non-threatening then i think it would be a better method of problem solving. not that it is not important to track individuals in case of true incompetence, but you know what i mean.

Quote from himilayaneyesThis situation is a crying shame. Maybe the hospitals in Canada think that they don't owe the citizens there anything since they have socialized medicine...but their taxes pay for the hospitals. I agree that here in the States that would never have happened b/c a lawyer would've gotten all the records and the media would've been all over it. Also, it sounds like a PE...pain in leg (DVt)...then she became short of breath...classic sign of a PE...they should have done a CT of the chest. Her heart rate was rapid....treat the underlying cause...they couldn't get a blood pressure...what idiot gives verapamil when we can't even get a bp. I feel so sorry for this family. I hope Canada changes the laws so that more families can get the justice they deserve. And the nurses thinking the patient had a GI bleed and the doc giving Lovenox anyway is just another reason that docs should take nurse opinions into consideration (at least Heparin has an antidote).

Quote from futureRN_AnastasiaW5: The fight for medical information after patients die - CTV NewsIt sounds a little bit too much like a conspiracy theory to me, but if it is not, this is scary. I would think that this doctor would have lost his license a long ago. Does this article even make any sense?

Quote from notjustanurseThe details seem sketchy at best. This "Tom" seems to have diagnosed the patient as having a PE based on s/s that can result from many conditions. And we don't know if he is a doctor, nurse, or the janitor that passed by the room as they were treating the patient.

Oh for the love of dog. Canada has universal healthcare which is completely different from "socialized medicine".I watched the first ten minutes of W5 and gave up. The family knows what they know and don't want to hear anything else.Canadians in general just aren't as litigation happy as Americans.