Medical malpractice

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In medicine, we have our first and most important medical principle, "Primum non nocere" and the meaning of this is "First, don’t cause harm." However, how can you feel it when you can’t sleep for a long time, and you must save a life or perform surgery? Well, it’s definitely difficult to make the best decision when you feel tired, and sometimes you can make mistakes, but in a hospital, one mistake can damage a person, and one mistake can cause a death. In this blog entry, I’ll share with you first what the definition of medical malpractice is; second, I’ll tell you about one experience in the hospital; and finally, I’ll tell you about my sister's experience.

Sometimes many people confuse medical malpractice with medical negligence, and these terms are not the same. The first one is when someone does something but doesn’t have the experience or skills to do it, which causes damage to the person; the second one is when someone knows how to do something but doesn’t do it. So, the person has a responsibility and has the skills and knowledge to do it, but for any reason, doesn’t do it.

Many coworkers have told me, and in the hospital, I have always heard about several cases of medical malpractice. In this moment, I’m telling you about one specific time. I remember my first month in the hospital, and a lot of people joked about one person. And they always warn "Please don’t be the same as... El daño." I was confused because I didn’t know who "El daño" was. This guy was a terrible student, but something that a lot of people remember about him is that one day he should have taken an arterial blood gas test from a cachectic patient, but he couldn’t do it, so he pierced the patient’s skin and left the patient with the syringe stuck to his arm.

In our case, when my sister was a baby, she was diagnosed with an interventricular and atrial septal defect in her heart, and she needed surgery. Well, after the surgery and her survival from it, one nurse injected intravenous solutions into her, and she got edematous because it wasn’t the correct volume of solution. She could have died if my parents hadn’t told the doctor that my sister was edematous, and that was not the only thing; my sister has an acute voice because in the surgery they hurt his vocal cords.

The more we practice, the less damage we cause to patients. So, we must take care of the things that we do. This career is difficult, but we must be precise in our diagnostics and our treatments.