When you find yourself in a hospital, clinic or even your doctor’s office, you expect a certain standard of care. You expect that the medical professionals and staff members attending to you are competent, will do their best to diagnose and treat you, and otherwise take care of you and your condition.
Unfortunately, you may not always receive the level of care you deserve. In many cases, no real harm comes to you, but in other cases, you could end up suffering from the lifelong ramifications of a medical mistake. In fact, some instances are so egregious that they qualify as “never events,” which are events that should never happen but do.
What qualifies as a never event?
Back in 2001, a list came together of alarming errors that occur in the medical field. Over the years, the list has increased to include no fewer than 29 events that constitute as “serious recordable events.” In order to simplify things, they were all assigned to one of the seven categories below:
- Most people have heard of surgical events that fall into this category, such as operations on the wrong patient, operations on the wrong body part or objects left behind in people’s bodies during surgery. Performing the wrong surgical procedure on a patient also falls into this category.
- Radiological events most often involve failing to account for a piece of metal from a patient before an MRI, which could cause serious injury or death.
- Patients who suffer harm from defective medical devices, contaminated drugs, an intravascular air embolism or the malfunction of a medical device fall into the category of product or device events.
- Some in the medical industry take advantage of their position to sexually abuse, abduct or otherwise harm their patients during criminal events.
- Patients who wander away, attempt or commit suicide, or leave the hospital without full control of their faculties could be the victims of patient protection events.
- Environmental events include injuries resulting from things such as electric shock, bedrails or restraints, lines for gases like oxygen, and burns.
- Care management events result from medical mistakes made while you are in the care of medical personnel, such as medication errors, bedsores, insemination of the wrong sperm or egg, and more.
Any of these events could result in you suffering irreparable harm. You are the one who suffers the consequences of another person’s negligence or mistake, and you deserve to pursue compensation. While it may never make you whole again, it could help with the financial ramifications you sustained and will continue to sustain into the future.
