If you’re lying unconscious in a Missouri operating room, you have zero control over events that are taking place in the room around you. As a patient, you entrust your safety and health during surgery to the surgeon and medical team. You can expect them to act in accordance with state laws and accepted safety standards of the industry. Many times, unfortunately, issues that constitute medical malpractice result in severe or life-threatening injuries to patients.
Before putting you to sleep for surgery, the surgeon must inform you of known risks. Sometimes, things can go wrong during a medical procedure through no fault of the medical team. There’s a big difference, however, between inherent risks and a botched surgery due to negligence.
These “never events” often constitute medical malpractice
If botched surgeries occur so often in Missouri and elsewhere that a colloquial term can describe such events, you know there’s a big problem in the medical industry. The phrase “never events” is common regarding surgical procedures gone wrong that should “never” happen. They typically occur when a surgeon or other medical team member’s negligence results in injuries to the patient.
The following list shows numerous types of botched surgeries that are “never events” and which often constitute medical malpractice:
- A surgery performed on the wrong patient
- Wrong-site surgery, meaning a surgeon operates on the wrong body part
- Correct patient but wrong surgical procedure
- Foreign object left inside a patient’s body
Events like this should never happen because there are checks and balances in place to prevent them. For example, staff must count and recount all supplies, such as surgical tools, gauze and other items that may be useful to a surgeon during an operation, before and after surgery. As such, no surgeon should be leaving a foreign object inside a patient’s body; however, this is a common “botched surgery” issue.
Botched surgeries devastate the lives of Missouri hospital patients
You can only imagine the horror of waking from anesthesia to discover that the surgeon performed a knee replacement on your left knee when you were supposed to receive a knee replacement on your right knee. If this or another botched surgery issue has caused you severe or life-threatening injuries, you may seek justice in a Missouri civil court.
There are risks involved in any medical (especially surgical) procedure. However, you should never suffer injuries or wind up in a worse condition following surgery than you were to start because of medical negligence. Missouri has laws in place to provide restitution to patients who have suffered damages at the hands of medical professionals.