Many medical procedures, especially surgeries, involve sedation to reduce the amount of pain the patient experiences. In these cases, it is the job of an anesthesiologist to administer anesthesia at the correct dosage as well as carefully monitor the patient during the procedure. What most people don’t realize is that there is plenty of room for mistakes to be made, and an anesthesia mistake can cause more issues than you might realize. Here are some things that you should know about anesthesia mistakes and how it leads to medical negligence injuries.
Dosing and Documentation
Two of the most common areas of anesthesia mistakes occur in dosing and documentation. While documentation errors, such as incorrectly filling out a patient’s anesthesia record often don’t affect more than the medical bill, a dosage error can lead to serious consequences, as you can imagine. A lot of factors affect what level of anesthesia a patient will need, from the procedure itself to the health condition of the patient. Since a dosing error usually comes from inexperience or carelessness, it should be considered medical malpractice. Too small of a dosage could lead to you experiencing undue pain, while too much could cause asphyxia, heart problems, and even death.
Intubation and IV
There are several parts to successfully administering anesthesia. An anesthesiologist will need to properly intubate a patient, which means that they will insert a breathing tube that will assist the patient in breathing during the procedure. An error in intubation could result in damage to the trachea or put the patient in danger of suffocation. Another thing the anesthesiologist manages during the procedure is fluid regulation, usually in the form of IV. Without the right amount of fluids, the drug can negatively impact the patient or cause them not to react to it as they should.
Monitoring and Pain Management
Once the procedure is over, the anesthesiologist is still responsible for monitoring the patient’s condition. At this phase, the most important task is managing the patient’s paint after the operation. Timing is especially important because the anesthesiologist will need to watch carefully for any side effects of the drugs in order to counteract them. A mistake here could cause the patient to develop a negative reaction, such as high blood pressure.
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