When Medicine Brings Disease Not Cure

Speculations regarding the negative effects of swine flu vaccine spread just like the pandemic. Based on reactions, it seems people are rather outraged than feared by such speculations.

Just what is the health risk posed by swine flu vaccine? According to the Medicines and Health Care Products Regulatory Agency or MHRA, there is a slightly elevated risk of GBS, thus further tests on flu jabs are recommended to assess possible association. GBS or Guillain-Barre Syndrome is a syndrome that attacks the nervous system and can result to paralysis or death if respiratory system is attacked.

MHRA clears, though, that risk with the vaccine hasn’t changed. Report simply expands ongoing GBS analysis. But as to the link of GBS with swine flu vaccine, that has still needs to be confirmed with evidence.

Nevertheless, possibly affected individuals reach millions, given the fact that swine flu vaccine was mixed with this year’s seasonal flu shots. There were 6 million swine flu jabs Pandemrix given, and individuals suspected of GBS numbers to 15.

There are health care professionals we see in Dickies uniforms who did not take swine flu vaccine during the pandemic. Even getting the seasonal flu shot was refused by some who wear White Swan Fundamentals scrubs and working in the medical industry. Perhaps, they’d just take the usual meds and wear their scrub jackets. Refusals did not occur only among health care workers, a number of public individuals stood against receiving the swine flu vaccines.

Doctors Missing the Basics Often End Up with Bad Judgment

The story of John Gordon, published in The Washington Post on September 27, was a classic problem lurking in the medical practice. He had undergone 2 knee surgeries, dozens of therapy sessions, acupuncture, and other treatments for wrong diagnosis by several orthopedists and oncologists, including a rare cancer.

Specialists missed, nurse solved the puzzling ailment, figuring out its Lyme disease. The knee problem, which persisted more than a year and cost Gordon unnecessary spending, was over in just two weeks.

Errors in diagnosis usually surface because physicians fail to do basic tests. Lyme disease, a bacterial infection caused by deer tick bite, only needed blood test. But because medical practitioners, including some specialists, easily jump to a more complicated conclusion, patients are not given the right treatment they needed.

This problem persists from when medicine was established until this very modern day. Could it be that such errors are a practice? Something preventable, but preventive measures were simply not applied. Standardized checklists for basic procedures must be widely used. This should minimize the chance doctors would make bad judgments. And if teamwork is better practiced among health care workers, everyone gets to speak their minds freely, laying different points that should lead to correct diagnosis and treatment procedures.

Just as how physicians, nurses, and pharmacists differ with preference in nursing scrubs, their opinion could also differ variedly, allowing the right one to be easily pin pointed. Whether one wears Cherokee uniforms, Dickies scrubs, Urbane scrubs or whatever type, his or her opinions should matter. This also tells that nurses and others must be allowed to challenge their superiors when they are right and be given protection for their action as necessary.

Nurse in Romania Faces Murder Case for Negligence

Present society teaches parents to trust only the healthcare professionals when it comes to their children’s health. But unwanted situations also teach parents to never completely give their trust to health experts for their safety.

People, including those in nursing shoes, can neglect their duties at the most unlikely circumstances. Just recently in Romania, Florentina Daniela Cirstea did a terrible mistake that ended in the tragic death of five newborns and left six others injured.

Cirstea, a nurse, will face a murder case because of allegedly neglecting her duties. According to a surveillance video, she left the ICU unit of the Giulesti Maternity Hospital in Bucharest for 12 minutes, the time when a fire broke out and put the children ablaze. The video also shows Cirstea left the ICU several times that day.

The fire started in an electrical cable attached to the air-conditioning unit of the intensive care room, quickly swept the room, burning incubators and other medical equipments according to prosecutor’s preliminary conclusion.

Surveillance footage also showed medical staff and parents were frantically trying to enter, breaking the door with to chair, to save the children from the burning ICU. Respondents could have easily entered if the person having the access card to the door was present, who apparently was nowhere around. - CNN

Dentist Charged for Using Paper Clips on Root Canals

$130,000 false Medicaid claims, illegally prescribed drugs, and put paper clips in patient’s root canals instead of the standard stainless steel posts are the charges that former Fall River Dentist Michael Clair will be formally facing on April 8 in the superior court.

• Clair is no longer authorized to submit claims in the Medicaid program since 2002. But according to the Medicaid Fraud Division, Clair hired several dentists at Harbour Dental Care, who are eligible to file Medicaid claims, to claim for him the dental services he performed. He is also accused of fraudulently billing about $130,000 for dental work between August 2003 and June 2005, since the Harbour Dental closed.

He is going to be charged of 5 counts of false Medicaid claims and three counts of larceny of more than $250.

• What about the illegally prescribing drugs? Combunox, Hydrocondone, and Percocet painkillers were allegedly prescribed by him for his staff members, who then gave some or all of the drugs back to him.

He will be facing 2 counts of illegally prescribing a Class B substance, as well as illegally prescribing Class C substance.

• Paper clips were used instead of standard stainless steel posts just so to be able to save money. Paper clips are temporarily used when performing root canal surgery, but can result to infection and pain.

He will also be charged of 2 counts of assault and battery.

Michael Clair’s history:

1999, Maryland – The state’s dental board revoked his dentistry license for performing unnecessary dental procedures between 1992 and 1998. He also encouraged other dentists to practice the same.
2001, Florida – Clair’s license to practice in the State of Florida was revoked in response to Maryland dental board’s action.
2003 – DEA or Drug Enforcement Administration cancelled his federal license in connection to his Florida license revocation.
Pending action by the Massachusetts Board of Dentistry
Dec. 2006, West Virginia – The Board of Dental Examiners cancelled Clair’s license due to the revocations in two states and pending action in Massachusetts.

How can patients safeguard themselves against such fraudulent and abusive acts?

At this point, patients need to use common sense. But Massachusetts Dental Society Assistant Executive Director Karen Rafeld gave a recommendation: Dental patients to seek second opinion before undergoing any surgery. And if looking for a new dentist, it is important to learn some background of any prospective practitioner. Ask family members and or friends of experiences and comments regarding services. This should tell whether a dentist is worth trusting. A little research will save you a lot.

Do not be limit yourselves in just one option. You will surely bump on someone who doesn’t merely look like a dentist because of wearing lab coats of medical scrubs. There are many other dentists who truly work in the true sense of their profession.

Doctors Missed Blocked Artery Patient Dies

A woman, age 37, shows up in the emergency room of her local hospital. She has been experiencing chest pains. Her arm is numb and throbbing. The doctors and nurses reassure here that they will get to the bottom of her symptoms. Not to worry. Besides - she's too young to have a heart attack.

They run some tests. They decide her problem must be stress-related, or anxiety perhaps. They tell her they are going to send her home. She protests because she knows something just isn't right. But they tell her she has no choice. They won't admit her to the hospital because she's too young to have a heart attack.

The next morning she collapses, and dies of a heart attack. The medical examiner tells her husband that her main artery is so badly blocked, he just can't figure out how they missed that. - Trisha Torrey, about.com

I could have just taken away my attention from this article, but Trisha says it's a true story which happened just 10 days ago, a very sad story that left to young children motherless and a bereaved husband.

Mistakes can be fatal. And the saddest part is, even if the family's victim wins the case, their loved one can never be brought to life again. If only medical examiners are more careful and more thorough in what they do... they will be worthy enough to wear those medical scrubs and lab coats... they can save patients, not kill them...

How does a heart attack occur?

This image will explain how a blocked artery could lead to death.

13 Hospitals Fined for Medical Errors that Caused Patients Death & Serious Injuries

Things can really get tough on some things. But the sad part is that it can happen at the most vulnerable times of people who are completely helpless. Take for example the patients who can do nothing but fully trust their lives in the doctor’s hands. However, there is no absolute safety in medicine. Medical errors can happen when they should not. And this is supported by what just happened in California.

State Department of Public Health officials fined 13 California hospitals for medical errors that killed or seriously injured patients. Health officials say hospital officials must submit plans to correct the problems that cost lives even.

• Los Angeles Community Hospital, Norwalk Campus, LA – $50,000 for the death of a patient who was supposed to be restrained and supervised, but was instead left to repeatedly pull out his tracheotomy tube until found unresponsive in his bed.
  

• California Hospital Medical Center, LA – $50,000 for misdiagnosis of ectopic pregnancy which caused the women suppressed immune system as well as mouth, throat and skin sores.
  

• Marina Del Rey Hospital, LA – failure to monitor the oxygen levels of a patient that caused her to pass out.
  

• St. Jude Medical Center, Fullerton – death of a patient because nurses failed to notice man’s monitor disconnected.
  

• Western Medical Center, Santa Ana – left surgical sponge in the patient
  

• Hoag Memorial Hospital, Newport Beach – MRI machine sucked a patient on a metal gurney and broke her leg and foot.
  

• John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital, Indio – failure to monitor patients and medication

Other hospitals fined are the following:

Grossmont Hospital, La Mesa
Kaiser Foundation Hospital, Oakland/Richmond
San Francisco General Hospital, San Francisco
Santa Clare Valley Medical Center, San Jose
Sharp Memorial Hospital, San Diego
University of California, San Diego Medical Center, San Diego