What is your Opinion of the Following Statement: "Prompt intervention would not have saved her life," -

Question

-WRT this Story (See Below).

Answer 1

A civil suit on the basis of "loss of chance" for a possible successful intervention would be appropriate, but the prognosis is bad enough that the "beyond a reasonable doubt" level isn't reached, so there's no way for the nurse to be charged criminally.

Answer 2

my question would be why did they not catch it before since she had been seen so often.  even frequent flyers deserve the benefit of the doubt.  i work in a hospital and i find this case hard to believe.  maybe they couldnt have saved her that day but previously she should have been (at the least) constipated

Answer 3

The statement is a clear devaluaton of human life.  Anyone in that much distress should be medically evaluated, and intervention begun, even if they've been previously seen and discharged.

[I'd go with all three, largely the bases of discrimination in our society, as well as a false economy that says we have only so many resources and should expend them as we think best rather than waste them on those we think undeserving.]

[I had a retired friend who was traveling in Egypt with a tour some years ago.  When they were some distance from any available emegency care he suffered a ruptured appendix.  They got him to a hospital as quickly as possible and he survived despite massive sepsis, and the fact that he was over eighty.  If that intervention there could save his life, why was not such intervention possible for a woman whose bowel ruptured in American University Hospital's ER?]

Answer 4

Writing them off as they write her off, hypothetically. Evil does not replace incompetence nor under staffing nor under equipping; what is is and what ain't ain't. Everybody reached their human limit. Whether or not that expressed its self in in-humanness, is an other question whose answer could only be guessed at. I guess partly yes.

Answer 5

That the person in question was basically already dead and nothing could've saved her.  A perforated bowel means she was already full of bacteria and probably had peritonitis and septicemia. The nurse mentioned in the article could have had an attitude, but after working in an inner-city hospital where people will shoot themselves on purpose to get drugs who wouldn't?  It's like the guy that was Danny  on Partridge Family said  a long time ago on his radio show - "If I go to the corner and buy vicodin from a guy named "Skeezix", I'm an addict, but if I go to the Dr and say "Doc I got this huge pain right here"  THAT 'S MEDICINE"

Answer 6

I think the statement itself is probably true. People don't usually survive a perforated bowel for long without surgical intervention.  Surely, the doctor in the ED did not dx her with gb stones without sending her off to radiology for an abdominal CT...If he/she did, then they should lose their license to practice, as that is malicious neglect of duty.  Assuming the pt was scanned...then I have to wonder why the radiologist who mistook a perf bowel for gall bladder stones has a license. I do not work triage, I work on an ICU...but I would like to think more priority would be given to a person in severe pain than what was given in this case. I can see putting others before her in triage, since she had just been seen, but it certainly seems like the nurse could have gotten an order to give her a shot for pain while she waited...It seems to be a sad fact in medicine that the more skilled the nurse, the more likely he/she is to forget that a patient is a person instead of a challenge. When I work with nsg students, I am always quick to point out that is one of the hardest parts of working on an ICU...the balancing act between a war on pathology and preserving the humanity of the person unfortunate enough to be in the middle of it.