Because emergency room personnel work in a high-pressure environment that requires rapid decision-making, they are held to a different standard of care compared to health professionals in other specialties. Nevertheless, they are still responsible for negligence and unacceptable errors that endanger patient safety and cause harm and death.
In an era of overcrowded hospitals and understaffed health care facilities, emergency room errors are, unfortunately, on the rise.
Many factors contribute to these unfortunate mistakes, including:
- Passing patients off to another doctor
- Forcing patients to see a nurse or nurse practitioner
- Lack of training
- Poor hospital procedures
- Defective or malfunctioning equipment
- Shortage of beds
- Understaffing
- Not spending enough time with a patient
- Failure to monitor and follow-up
In some cases, emergency room mistakes occur because a doctor or nurse is too fatigued to deliver the proper level of care. In other situations, emergency rooms attempt to reduce their patient volume by glossing over symptoms or minimizing the severity of a patient’s complaints.