When you visit a healthcare facility for surgery, you expect to go home with a great outcome, a smooth recovery, and for the issue to never recur again. However, surgical errors can and do occur and are one of the leading reasons for medical malpractice lawsuits. For this reason, a majority of people have heard about them. Because of how devastating they can be, many people rightly wonder whether they should be worried about them.
What Are Surgical Errors?
Surgical error is a term used to describe multiple errors that can happen during surgery. In stricter terms, they are preventable mistakes that occur during surgery that a competent surgeon or doctor should not make. They can also occur due to inadequate training, miscommunication, and other issues.
Should You Be Worried About Surgical Errors?
The true answer is yes and no. You should be worried about surgical errors because, when they happen, they typically cause a lot of damage and suffering to victims. They can have a cascading effect on the patient and their family, especially if they affect their ability to work. If you have been harmed during surgery, you may be entitled to compensation. Hire experienced surgical error lawyers to handle your case and help you get the compensation you deserve.
According to various studies, surgical errors affect about 3-5% of all patients who go in for surgery, with about half of these cases preventable. The overwhelming majority of people are never at risk of surgical errors. While it is a good idea to understand the risks, here are some reasons why surgical errors are not as prevalent as they used to be.
Training
All healthcare professionals are highly trained. Additionally, they continuously train so they can become even more competent. Their training is often tied to their experience, so many hospitals have resident programs for doctors and surgeons to learn and train before they operate on real patients.
Such training also applies to anesthesiologists who administer anesthetics during surgery. They are highly qualified, and it is almost impossible to find a trained anesthesiologist handling dosing or patients on their own. They will typically work under supervision until they are competent and experienced enough.
If these procedures were not in place, we would have many more surgical errors reported.
Better Equipment
Many healthcare facilities now use various equipment to reduce errors as much as possible. In the case of anesthetics, they use machines to control the flow of medication and the order they administer medication. Doing so prevents over and underdosing which can have serious consequences.
Doctors also use various equipment to monitor patients during surgery to ensure everything is going as expected. These machines can alert the team if something goes wrong so they can react to it and limit the damage.
Oversight
Many healthcare facilities now have facilitators who provide oversight for all adverse events. If they happen, they analyze them to learn what happened, come up with viable solutions, and ensure they do not happen again.
Depending on the type, surgery is inherently dangerous, and there is always the risk of surgical errors. However, the medical industry has implemented procedures and processes to reduce these errors as much as possible. Doing so has made surgery much safer than a few decades ago.