Who is to blame when patients die in overcrowded and understaffed emergency rooms?

The story of the death of a psychiatric patient in a large Brooklyn, New York hospital got my attention, both as a nurse and as a human being. These stories are, thankfully, rare but still happen too frequently. In this case, lack of a bed for the patient was cited as the reason the patient was in the ER for almost 24 hours. The patient was reportedly suffering from a psychiatric condition, but deaths of patients have occurred in emergency rooms among patients with medical conditions as well. Read more →

There’s an interesting case going on in Louisiana that’s pushing the limits of the definition of medical malpractice. For those of you that don’t know, the jurisdiction for medical malpractice in the United States is held by each state. That’s right, what is malpractice in California might not be malpractice in Texas.

In general, there is reasonable consensus about the definition of medical malpractice. For instance, if you operate on the wrong limb or the wrong patient, then most states will consider that malpractice. However, the more rare the situation, the more grey the definition becomes. Read more →