Criminalizing Medical Errors--Its Time has Come.

Adashi, E.Y., Cohen, I.G. Criminalizing medical errors will undermine patient safety. Nat Med 28, 2241–2242 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-01982-1

 

This article needs to be called out for the specious argument and self-serving propaganda that it is. I won't submit a letter to the editor because I am not a healthcare professional; although, as a patient, I often wish for a prosecutor like the one who charged the nurse, Ms. Vaught.  

Errare humanum est and I agree wholeheartedly. However, I argue that there is no accountability in the medical field unless you have the funds to pursue a legal remedy or you were seriously injured in which case lawyers will contact YOU. 

You might think that the BME's (Boards of Medical Examiners) would find a means of assuring our safety but I assure you, they are either impotent or they only see themselves as foxes guarding hen houses. I've logged nearly a dozen complaints against doctors. The only time they got back to me was to inform me that Doctor Shah (his real name) or any doctor in New Jersey can stop treating you for whatever reason and he doesn't have to give the reason. I suspect I'm not the only one who's felt frustrated with these government bureaucrats.

    “'medication errors alone, occurring either in or out of the hospital' accounted for over 7,000 deaths annually in the USA². Two decades later, medical errors still regularly happen"

So says the article that quotes a year 2000 report by the Institute of Medicine, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Conveniently, they do not tell us what punishment, if any, was meted out to those who made those 7000 little boo-boo's involving human lives. Looking at the complaints filed by New Jersey's BME, you won't notice any license revocations unless a prosecutor had pressed charges.

When a citizen dies at home, the police question everyone except for the professionals who may have been treating the deceased; I can almost hear them say, "we can't question them...for, after all, they have licenses." Once again, someone in the medical field "buries their mistake."

The article says that workers would hesitate to admit to errors because they would fear prosecution. Well, what if we made it so that NOT reporting an error is always a worse crime than just committing the error. Won't that be a deterrent? But hold on, you just killed someone by giving the wrong medication. Isn't someone looking into the cause of death? How is it that this hypothetical criminal is not afraid of being found out by the coroner or the medical examiner? Because, silly goose, doctors, nurses, and everyone that adores them, freely and sociopathically bury medical mistakes with the ipso facto consent of the government.

We need medical accountability--I for one don't care whether it comes from a revamped BME or an enlightened prosecutor but for God's sake, when has self-policing not been problematic?