Editorial: Medical Abuse
We hear a lot of good things about the Medical Profession. In general they are true, but what we don’t hear is the other side of the story, the bad things.
Approximately 55,000 Americans die each year from medical malpractice or related negligence in the medical profession. Mistakes, misdiagnoses, wrong treatment, and more. In addition to those who don’t make it and pass away, hundreds of thousands more suffer needlessly because of carelessness and worse including bad or abusive attitudes, knowing it all, failing to listen to the patient and more.
Sadly, negligence, abuse and worse, masked by an enforced policy of silence, denial and cover-up, outweigh the benefits with a growing number of medical professionals.
Some examples from real life best illustrate this concept:
- 1. A nurse I know with a serious obesity problem was told by several Md’s over a 10 year period that she was “just lazy and ate too much”. Then her metabolic problem was properly diagnosed and successfully treated. She was psychology abused by the “just lazy and ate too much” earlier MD’s whose medical negligence over 10 years in duration also resulted in permanent physical and perhaps some emotional damage.
- 2. In another case a man with serious heavy metal poisoning was misdiagnosed for 30 years leaving him permanently impaired. His many requests for help during those years resulted in his being abusively labeled instead of being properly diagnosed and treated. Incredibly, during the 30 years he was misdiagnosed and labeled, his blood chemistry was clearly and consistently abnormal (as evidenced by a review of his lab work).
- 3. And so on, and so on…
All too often physicians are unwilling to get to the root of the problem, then slap a label on the patient and treat the label as if its real or refer the patient.
Often its an incorrect diagnosis with incorrect medication. The patient in Case 2 above was prescribed everything from steroids and antibiotics to psychotropic drugs, none of which were appropriate. Sometimes its a psychiatric or psychological label which is nothing more than a convenient construct handed out by an often dubiously qualified physician. These labels are rarely correct and often damn the patient when they become part of the patients records.
All too often medical practitioners respond to Gestalts or impressions, and unfortunately fail to properly hear or even properly evaluate the patient.
Money also plays a very big role. There was a time when a young person become a medical professional because they were interested in helping others. According to my uncle, who was an M.D., physician applicants to work in his clinic were primarily interested in how much they would make, not about their medical opportunities and obligations at the clinic. If the Doc is primarily interested in making money, he may not want difficult or time consuming cases.
I’ve met a lot of very good medical folks, and some poor if not potentially disastorous ones. I’ve also met some abusive ones who were clearly unfit to practice medicine or treat or care for any patient.
If you feel medical related abuse is valid or pressing concern in the medical profession, please include your comments below …..
Amen. My friend is ill with cancer and treated with distain at the cancer center in Florida.
When I complained on my friends behalf, I was told that since I wasn’t a relative I had better mind my own business and not “interfere”.
It gets worse but I’ll spare you their disgusting comments.
In addition the hygiene and sanitary procedures in the treatment areas get sacrificed as they rush the patients through. What has the practice of medicine come to?
Several types of healthcare professionals including the doctors, the surgeons, nurses, technicians, and even the hospital workers or employees can do medical malpractice. Medical malpractice is seen not only in the United States, but also in many parts of the globe. The people of Italy are probably going to need payday loans to get justice as they work to dismantle a criminal organization that has been hard at work doing just that. The organization would sell fake nursing degrees to those looking for a way to obtain extra money with a larger payday. One of these fake-nursing diplomas runs about 15,000 Euros or $19,000. The criminal organization provided brief training in basic skills such as taking patients’ blood pressure and giving injections. Fortunately, their incompetence eventually caught up, finally bringing down the crime ring’s operation. Here in the U.S. there have been many cases of malpractice over the years. We’ve heard the horrifying stories of people who had the wrong limbs amputated or the wrong organs removed. These stories are most remembered but are not as common. Nonetheless, malpractice for things such as wrong diagnosis and accidental death remain in the air. As startling as the statistics show (some 44,000 to 88,000 cases get filed each year), malpractice to a certain degree is just natural human error. No medical system will ever be perfect, considering the fact that we all are imperfect. However, we have the capability to do certain things to improve the system. One of the things we must address is the too long of hours that the people in this field put in. A poll shows that the average shift worked by those in residency was 37.6 hours with most working over eighty hours a week on average. Sleep deprivation is a rising concern – we all know this affects our ability to think and perform at a productive level. So don’t hesitate to reschedule a doctor’s appointment if your physician appears to be sleepy. Click here to read the full article yourself on the payday loan money blog at Personalmoneystore.com.
Well, as a cancer patient myself I’ve had similar experiences but assumed they were rushing simply to make more money. I was billed well over 100,000 for 25 treatments and they were simultaneously treating about 100 other patients. Thats over 10 million a month! Greed has come to rule medicine in America.