When Frances Barnes had a stroke in August 2008, she was taken by ambulance to Howard University Hospital. The 80-year-old grandmother was there for about two weeks when she began complaining about pain in her legs. Her daughter Althea Hart pulled back her mother’s blankets and noticed a strange odor.
Hart thought the smell was coming from the compression stockings wrapped around Barnes’s legs to help with circulation, so she took them off. She found that her mother’s left foot had turned black.
Hospital staff had failed to follow physician orders, which required taking off the compression stockings after each shift for at least 30 minutes, according to a DC Department of Health investigation.
"We called a nurse right away, and they tried to heal her infection," says Patricia Moss, another of Barnes's daughters. "But they couldn't."
For the full article please go here.
Showing posts with label doctor visit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label doctor visit. Show all posts
Monday, January 30, 2012
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
The Case For A 'Check In' Instead Of A Checkup from NPR
by Michelle Andrews
It can't hurt to ask if that blood test is really necessary.
People who visit their primary care doctors for routine care often find themselves poked, prodded and advised in all kinds of unnecessary and unhelpful ways.
Add it all up, and the cost of the dubious tests and medical interventions runs to about $6.8 billion a year. The annual checkup, an American medical tradition, is a prime offender.
Some of the waste seems so obvious. We're talking about doctors ordering blood tests when a patient has no risk factors or symptoms of illness, for example, or prescribing a brand-name cholesterol-lowering drug without first making sure a generic won't do the job.
For the full article please go here.
It can't hurt to ask if that blood test is really necessary.
People who visit their primary care doctors for routine care often find themselves poked, prodded and advised in all kinds of unnecessary and unhelpful ways.
Add it all up, and the cost of the dubious tests and medical interventions runs to about $6.8 billion a year. The annual checkup, an American medical tradition, is a prime offender.
Some of the waste seems so obvious. We're talking about doctors ordering blood tests when a patient has no risk factors or symptoms of illness, for example, or prescribing a brand-name cholesterol-lowering drug without first making sure a generic won't do the job.
For the full article please go here.
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