Midwifery: July 2006 Archives
Pregnant Teen Died Of Medication Error At St. Mary's Hospital
The late Dr. Robert Mendelsohn used to say that going in to the hospital should be like going to war. You go in only if you absolutely have to, you take all the qualified allies you can find, and you get in and out as fast as possible.
Errors happen in the best of hospitals, because ultimately we are all human and we all make mistakes. I can only imagine what hell on earth the nursing staff at this hospital are going through. No one intentionally makes even a slight error. But right now we have a illness care chaos in this country, not a health care system. With the best of intentions, and more $$$$ per capita spent than most of the industrialized world, we still have some of the worst outcomes overall.
We have too many specialists, and not enough generalists. We have lots of high tech rescue procedures and not enough basic prevention available. We have committees that focus on nit-picky details and ignore the big picture.
I don't pretend to have the answers. I will continue to do what I can from inside to try to protect my patients and help them to get and stay healthy. And, BTW, I refuse to demean my patients by calling them consumers. They are not just economic entities who purchase a commodity of health and illness care - they are human beings to whom I have a responsibility in response to the trust they have put in me.
I think that we need to return to the days when we saw medicine, nursing, and midwifery as a sacred covenant.
a medical student remembers a midwife
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