Medical Malpractice Attorneys Hold Ohio Hospitals Responsible for Emergency Room Errors

Emergency room errors are usually caused by negligent hospital staff

The emergency department of a hospital is often the first place a patient encounters medical personnel. Nurses in the E.R. must appropriately triage patients as they arrive. In other words, they must quickly determine which patients need immediate care, and which patients can wait. Too often, however, triage decisions are wrong.

Patients with acute, life-threatening problems are forced to wait for extended periods of time. When this happens, the result can be catastrophic. For example, failure to attend right away to a patient with a heart attack or stroke (“brain attack”) or a brain bleed or blood clot in the lungs can quickly lead to death or can result in permanent and severe disability. These are just a few of the conditions that must be dealt with immediately in an emergency department. The people of Cleveland have come to trust the attorneys at The Eisen Law Firm when emergency rooms commit malpractice during triage.

How do hospitals in Cleveland and throughout Ohio make emergency room mistakes leading to malpractice?

Even when triage decisions are made correctly, doctors and nurses in the emergency room can make critical errors. Emergency medicine doctors are notorious for overestimating their ability to “eyeball” a patient and figure out whether anything life-threatening is going on. They may spend too little time listening to the patient, and as a result of their arrogance, end up sending home a very sick person with a treatable condition. By the time the patient returns to the hospital, it is either too late to save the patient or the treatment has become much more difficult and risky.

It is important to understand that the quality of emergency care varies widely from hospital to hospital and even within a hospital from doctor to doctor. Many E.R. doctors are very experienced and well-credentialed. On the other hand, some emergency rooms are known to be staffed at times by inexperienced physicians, including doctors-in-training who are “moonlighting” in the E.R. Inexperience is a major contributor to E.R. mistakes. A seven-figure settlement was negotiated when an E.R. doctor made an error and failed to impress upon the physician the seriousness of a patient’s abdominal pain, which resulted in her death.

For decades, we at The Eisen Law Firm have represented people and families who have been harmed by mistakes made in the emergency room. We have seen cases of E.R. mistakes literally from head to toe. If you or a loved one has been injured from a mistake in the E.R., call us now for a free consultation.