The Pros And Cons Of Wrong-Site Surgery

The disadvantage of Dr. Ruiz waiting until the follow up to inform the patient about the error and the fact that the patient needs more surgery runs the risk of compromising the physician and patient relationship. That relationship is built on trust. Patients trust that the physician is skillful, knowledgeable, and trustworthy. Also, the patient may become angry, and angry enough to initiate a lawsuit. Even worse, the patient may not trust any medical professionals and choose not to seek medical attention for other conditions. Also, the patient could have become more ill from the lack of treatment. The only advantage of waiting for the follow-up to discuss more surgery is that the patient may have suffered more harm undergoing anesthesia for a longer period of time. This is also a disadvantage of returning the patient back to surgery once the mistake was discovered, during the same event. The advantage of returning the patient to surgery is that it strengthens the physician and patient relationship. The physician recognized the error and desired to fix the error, which may appear noble in the eyes of the patient.
Wrong-site surgery should not happen because safety measures should be in place and healthcare providers should adhere to those recommendations. In our case, what went wrong is a series of errors occurred along the way. First, the physician did not recheck the ultrasound before operating. Second, there were no good communications among the medical professionals, which shows a lack of coordination of patient care. Third, the medical professionals relied on too few documents (posting sheet and office notes) and the patient’s word to determine surgery