A police officer was recently tried and convicted on negligent homicide charges when she accidentally fired her gun instead of a taser. She faces now years in prison.
For every person killed by police, hundreds are killed as a result of mistakes by doctors, nurses, and other medical staff. Estimates are that 250,000 to 440,000 people die each year in the US as a result of these avoidable errors.
. . . a death due to medical error as one that is caused by inadequately skilled staff, error in judgment or care, a system defect or a preventable adverse effect. This includes computer breakdowns, mix-ups with the doses or types of medications administered to patients and surgical complications that go undiagnosed.
While doctors and nurses are frequently sued for malpractice, they almost never face criminal charges for negligence or errors. Should that change?
Does it make sense that police are held to a higher standard?
In the Potter case, the police officer yelled that she had a taser before firing. It is clear that she fired her gun accidentally.
Every nurse or doctor who accidentally gives someone the wrong medication or the wrong dose should logically face criminal charges under the law used to convict Potter.’
My opinion is that the law should be rewritten to prevent convictions for accidents such as this.The people who should face criminal charges are hospital officials or police chiefs who knowingly keep defective systems that result a high risk of dangerous mistakes, but they rarely face any consequences.
Medical workers are already held to a much higher standard than cops anyway.
Imagine a nurse stepping on the neck of every patient that’s slightly uncooperative. Choke slamming grandma just because she wouldn’t take medicine the first time asked. They would be fired. A cop gets his boots tongue-shined for the same thing
Yeah, I agree, medical errors cause many deaths and other serious problems, I just don’t think they’re the third leading cause of death in the US. And convincing people that your doctor is likely to screw up and kill you can prevent people from getting needed medical care.
As for the OP, I don’t think doctors and nurses should be charged with crimes for honest mistakes, and I think the Potter conviction is too harsh.
Not turning over an immobile patient and causing massive bed sores and sepsis is just as bad. That being said the op is absolutely ridiculous because it flies in the face of years of tort reform pushed for by conservatives.
One of the major causes of death is infection. When bodies are opened bacteria are gonna enter the body. The biggest source of mrsa infections are hospitals. There is no way to prevent that.
Yes, the majority of medical errors should not be crimes, in my opinion. Medical malpractice constitutes an improper or illegal treatment, or negligence, which obviously should be crimes, but I think those cases are relatively rare.
No medical Malpractice is a standard higher than negligence. Unfortunately medicine is far from being an exact science and it should remain that only when doctors actually deviate from the standard of care that they can be sued.
If the standard is lowered then there will be chaos.
Medical malpractice occurs when a hospital, doctor or other health care professional, through a negligent act or omission, causes an injury to a patient. The negligence might be the result of errors in diagnosis, treatment, aftercare or health management.
