The Emergency Medicine Resident - Avoidable Medical Malpractice Case

The emergency medicine resident and the avoidable lawsuit (based on a true story)




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[plaguedoc]

I have heard and even seen similar situations happened in my hospital.
Never overtrust your seniors, if you are feeling that something is wrong, go after it. No one is a perfect physician.
And most importantly DOCUMENT EVERY SINGLE THING!! You won't believe how fast your seniors can shamelessly lie aginst you in front of the judge.

[klattalexis]

He didn't want to get yelled at again.

[pavlik]

It's hard to overestimate an importance of these "avoidavle medical malpractice case" videos. We learn a lot of "pure" medicine in medical school, but don't know much about something behind diagnostic and treatment plan after graduation. Thank you so much! I would like to watch more and more videos like this one.

[mrthomas]

People here are really hasty to judge. As a resident my self I can understand the avoidance of conflicts. Though sometimes you must follow yourself. The resident knew what should've been done.

[cs]

Yep, you will get thrown under the bus in a heart beat. Welcome to medicine.

[oliverskoglund]

"Prestige kills patients" - my prof

[celloivan]

This is by far my favorite series of videos. Excellent product. Thank you so much.

[pchou]

Also this as well as many surgery cases is the toxic micro aggression we need to remove from medicine. He did not want to get yelled at. The negative feedback seen in so much of medicine only damage team work and communication.

[jonathankleinow]

This scenario is very similar to how a lot of planes crashed before the 1980s, when the concept of Crew Resource Management was implemented at airlines. Emergency medicine could probably stand to adopt some of the same principles from CRM in the decision-making process.

[lazhashorsh]

The most important thing to do in residency is documenting personally if my attending answers my call 5 minutes late i document it ... protect yourself first

[mikezappulla]

I would have told him to watch his tone and catch me outside if he thinks he is hard like that. Lol. On a more serious note, sometimes you do have to stand up for yourself and call attendings out when they are condescending like that. They are not used to getting talked to in that way and usually ease up a bit.

[kripanshukhandelwal]

I needed this early in the morning.
Lesson learned

[nirmalfrancis]

Is normal to have a gunshot wound as a routine in emergency?or is it in US only?And Dr.Watson cant ask for a chest imaging himself?

[blackbearable]

Ok, I am just a med student but aren't residents allowed to put in their own orders? I would have at least gotten out the ultrasound to look for dissections that way. EM people use ultrasound all the time.

[Bmewrite]

Toxicity killed this pt. The resident shouldn’t be found at fault.

[hamidrezafathimd]

Of course by imaging we mean TTE to see the flap of dissection, not a chest X-ray!

[MrJayPuff]

Good thing we have malpractice insurance

[chmith]

yeah as an ED doc of enough years, there's def times to avoid conflict, esp when ppl who control your future employment/sched are involved. but never when an aortic dissection is very clearly right in front of you. and let's be clear, this is MS4 level diagnosis, easy peasy in realtime. The liability should go to the attending imo, but grow a pair and wake the asshole up again. plus, i'm guessing (correctly) the attending was not EM trained. This kinda stuff happens more in rural places like roswell- you have an old doc in the twilight of their career hearing cases about rashes and dental pain but has no business seeing the occasional critical patient. plus, what res director is letting their residents practice in this kind of a setting without good supervision.... also, a little more info would have been nice to see what a jury ended up saying.... i'm guessing they settled though cuz the same insurance carrier would be covering both likely. feel bad for the R2-3 though

[mohammedqate]

He has to follow the protocol from the beginning .

[ym]

Dr. Watkins suspected a bad situation here obviously but he tried to avoid responsibility by doing only what his senior said. Come on, couldn’t he even search google for irregular bp in the extremities?