Retained Surgical Items

The stories are frequent enough; surgical sponge left inside patient. Surgeon leaves forceps in abdomen. 3 foot guide wire found in patients’ chest. Retained surgical items can include sponges, towels, medical device components, surgical instruments, needles, scalpel blades and entire instruments.

They can be discovered months or even years after the initial procedure and cause significant morbidity, serious infection and mortality. The risk is higher for obese patients, during abdominal surgery and lengthy operations involving multiple surgical teams. The risk for retained items is 9-fold higher during emergency surgeries and 4-fold higher when an unexpected change of procedure takes place.

The Role of the Expert Witness in Medical Malpractice Litigation

When a medical malpractice lawsuit occurs, the hospital and all members of the health care team may be named as defendants. This might include the nurses, physicians, nurse practitioners, midwives, ambulance attendants, laboratory technicians, respiratory therapists, nursing and medical students and contracted hospital employees who provided care. Both the plaintiff and defense lawyers may then be required to retain experts from each of the defendant disciplines to provide expert opinion. Although there is no obligation for health care professionals to take on this role, you may be considering it. Many regulatory bodies endorse the professional responsibility to do so. This article will help you learn more about the role and responsibilities of the expert witness.

10 Tips for a Successful Hospital Stay

You’ve got chills — they’re multiplying. It’s 3 a.m. and you’ve been tossing and turning for hours. An extra blanket could put the shivers to rest,  but where’s the nurse? And the chorus of snores from the next bed is competing with the attention-seeking rumble from your hungry stomach. Aren’t hospitals supposed to be places of rest and recovery? Fear and uncertainty can amp up your stress levels and ruin your stay, but don’t let them run the show. Our hospital insiders give you the behind-the-scenes scoop on how you can feel more comfortable and in control.

Prepping The Medical Expert Witness

In modern litigation, though trials are few and far between, the prospect of eventual trial continues to be the infrastructure around which cases are built. The steps in preparing an expert for trial ensure parties identify the issues in dispute and distill complex matters to the essence. While the specific nature of allowable communication between counsel and experts may differ by jurisdiction, universally the courts will be looking to the expert to be an impartial advisor. The expert’s evidence will assist the court in understanding complex technical matters in the decision making process.

Exploring triage in the hospital emergency room

The inside scoop on hospital triage

Connect Experts explores the system used by nurses to assess and priorize ER patients

It’s another packed evening in the hospital emergency room. You’re here with a painful cut on your hand, caused when you grabbed at a razor-sharp piece of falling metal tubing. You can’t help but notice that the busy waiting area is overflowing with patients and worried family members in equally dire straits.

Next to you, a mom sits anxiously with her toddler, whose tears, flushed face and bleary eyes suggest she has a fever. Across the aisle, an elderly man is coughing loudly into a tissue (causing you to secretly hope his illness isn’t contagious).

You’re called by the triage nurse, who tells you your swollen purple index finger should have been stitched days ago. She sends you back to the waiting room, smiling patiently as you ask how long until you see a doctor. “We’ll get you in as soon as possible, we have a lot of sick patients here tonight.”

Now, picture that you are the triage nurse for a moment. How do you determine who goes in next? Over the past 20 minutes alone, the following patients have arrived in the emergency along with the sobbing toddler with a temperature of 39.5C, a heart rate of 120/minute, sore throat and earache:

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