53 Times Doctors Realized Something Had Gone Terribly Wrong

When i worked as a nurse i witnessed a patient fall on her side in a geriatric ward. She was unable to walk after this and became increasingly confused. I suggested she might have a hip fracture. The doctor sent her for an x ray. Of her upper arm. Only. She had a humerus fracture sure but still refuses to walk. I worked that weekend and told every doctor I rounded with to send her for an x ray. They all examined her but no x ray. On monday the head doctor was back. She lifted the blanket and saw that the leg was shortened and outwardly rotated. The x ray revealed an uncomminuted hip fracture. She was wincing in pain for 3 days because no one listened to me. 

This event among others made me decide to study medicine. Today i work as a doctor and keep advocating that you need to take a nurses worry seriously.

I’m an ICU nurse. Took care of a patient who came in for an elective nephrectomy due to cancer. Should have been pretty straight-forward, and wasn’t expecting many lifestyle changes afterwards since you can live with one healthy kidney. Patient woke up in PACU and couldn’t feel their legs. Rushed to CT and turns out, when the surgeon performing the procedure was supposed to be stapling off the renal artery of the kidney they took out, they somehow stapled shut the ENTIRE AORTA. Basically no blood flow was perfusing to the entire lower half of this patients body. Then they had to have a massive 16+ hour long surgery to repair the aorta. They ended up doing okay (all things considered) but I still cannot believe that happened. How do you manage to staple shut a giant pulsating vessel like the F*****G AORTA on accident? I hope they sued the s**t out of that surgeon and won.

A patient came in with urinary retention. He was a man in his 50s with advanced cancer, which was probably the cause of the retention.

Normally, in cases like this, the bladder is drained with a urinary catheter. After several painful attempts, however, no catheter could be passed.

The doctor came out and told the patient and his wife that this was basically it—that nothing more could be done, that he was going to shut down and d*e from the urinary retention. The patient had already accepted his fate, and his wife started crying.

The doctor then went into the break room and discussed the case with another doctor. The second doctor immediately gave her a "what the f**k?" look and told her they could perform a suprapubic cystostomy (basically inserting the cathether by puncturing the abdominal wall).

The original doctor went back to the patient and, within five minutes of telling him he was essentially a d**d man walking, said everything was fine and that they were going to get the urine out after all.

This wasn't her only s***w-up, of course (I've seen her letting pulmonary embolisms wait for HOURS), but this is the one that has stayed with me the most, because... what the f**k?

To top it all off, she was incredibly self-important, which I suspect heavily influenced the way she practiced medicine.

And I was supposed to learn from this doctor. I still get angry just thinking about it.

Morbidly obese man has open heart surgery. Standard type of equipment is used to hold the rib cage together and close things up. He's in the ICU for recovery, typical for complicated major surgery like this.

A number of cascading errors happened. For one, it was a holiday weekend. The CT who performed the procedure was in a hurry to get out of town. A nurse reported the suture looked like it could be loosening.

CT hands off, notes in the chart to monitor the site and evaluate on Monday.

Pt had progressively worsening coughing fits going into the weekend, progressive pain and agitation as well.

At some point during one of these fits, two nurses are attempting to manage and calm pt when they hear a snap, the nurse looks down and sees that she is holding the pt's heart in her hand, as it has been expelled after the wire holding the rib cage failed.

Pt expired almost immediately.

This was a malpractice suit that involved a former employer of mine and a couple former colleagues

That's the second worst mistake I've seen.

The worst one was an ortho installing a hip replacement backwards.

Don't worry though that guy is banned from the OR. Now he does peer review for insurance companies, telling competent docs that their treatment plan isn't medically necessary.

I’m not being flippant or trying to make a stand here but short staffing is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I have seen individual errors, but when the unit is short staffed the shift before mine there are a thousand things that get neglected and oftentimes those misses add up to dangerous situations.

Many moons ago, when I was a medical student- the country hospital anaesthetist (who rumour had it was often drunk) was so incredibly bad at his job that for limb procedures, the patient‘s arm would STILL BE MOVING during the operation (withdrawing from painful stimuli). He would physically hold the arm or leg still himself and insist he had done his job properly…

Imagine my horror some seven years later when my spouse was undergoing a major procedure and the city hospital’s “new anaesthetist“ ambled in to take his pre-op history.

You better bet that I paged my husband’s surgeon so g*****n fast and told him everything I knew about this guy. He was horrified and called in a second anaesthetist to take over.

Patient has major abdominal surgery and is open with a clear plastic looking window. Patient has a pain pump going into their spine so they don't feel major open abdominal wound. Bad nurse is supposed to be checking patient q15 minutes. Patients nurse aid is constantly checking patient because he's pressing button and pump is running but he's screaming in pain. Nurse is alerted 4 times but says patient is baby and won't physically check patient. Nurse aid risked her job going outside her scope to check patient herself and finds epidural was pulled out, bed is soaked because meds have been pumped everywhere but the patient, patient ripped open wound or something while thrashing and screaming in pain. Patient went back to surgery and the nurse retired less than 6 months later.

I was a clinical assistant at a detox center. One of our clients had a fatal seizure from alcohol withdrawal about a week into his stay. Other CAs were literally begging the nurse to transfer him to the ER bc he took a sudden downturn. The nurse on staff was so adamant that his symptoms couldn’t be that severe a week into withdrawal and he had been “just fine” for about 36 hours. He died in his sleep that night. He was only about 30, and unlike most of our clients, was really dedicated to starting recovery. The worst part was that when the CAs were discussing reporting the muse, one of the other nurses said “we shouldn’t bother with all that” and “it would be really hard on *nurse*” They reported her anyway but she basically got a slap on the wrist.

Veterinarian here. I still have no idea how the f**k this one happened. A few years ago a kitten came in for fever and abdominal pain a couple days after a spay. Ok, maybe we have a surgical site infection, it happens. Worst case maybe blood loss from a knot that wasn’t tied down enough or a ureter got lighted during the spay—bad complication, but the ureter and uterine horns are right next to each other, and sometimes we see both get tied off together. It’s rare but happens often enough that in vet school we’re specifically warned to look out for this.

Oh no, if only it were that. The uterus was still there. One uterine horn was still attached and in place. The other uterine horn was cut and flapping in the breeze. The uterus itself was untouched. **The surgeon had removed part of the kitten’s descending colon and colonic artery, cut another part of the colon, and left the rest of the colon open, part of it dying from lack of blood supply, and leaking s**t into the kitten’s belly.** The kitten was septic from this. I don’t know how she was still alive.

The kitten was rushed back into surgery, where our specialist actually removed the uterus, flushed everything out, and reattached both ends of the colon. Barely managed to do that one. The kitten spent several days in the ICU but made a full recovery.

The uterus and colon look nothing alike. Blood vessel look nothing like either. I have no f*****g clue how that vet managed to do this.

Both the worst error and the most amusing.

As a junior doctor I was bleeped to the ward because a patient “just didn’t seem himself”. Arrived to observe a student nurse trying to spoon yoghurt into a corpse.

“You just don’t seem very hungry today Mr Smith.”.

Not a doctor or nurse, but I was sitting with a friend in the hospital post-surgery.

A nurse came by and gave him his evening medications. I watched and listened to what meds they gave him - he was high as a kite from the morphine drip and had no idea what it was he was swallowing.

About a half hour later the next crew of nurses had started their shift. A nurse came to my friend's room - "Okay, time for your evening medications."

I asked her what she wanted to give him. She told me - it was the same stuff he'd gotten from the previous shift's nurse 30 minutes ago.

I stopped her and told her he'd already gotten those meds, and I asked her to check the records. She argued a bit, but went to check.

She came back and agreed that he had already been properly dosed, so she went off and did the rest of her rounds - I hoped that those other patients were getting the right meds on the right schedule.

I don't remember what d***s my friend was given rhat night, or if a double dose would have been all that dangerous. But what if it had been?

And why was the nurse trying to dose him twice - why did the system allow it? Why did nobody notice that two different nurses were handing out d***s from the same schedule without verifying that they had already been given?

It just shows that a vulnerable patient should have a friend or family member with them as advocate as much as possible. I'll never let a loved one (or myself) be alone in a hospital again.

Surgeon performed wrong-side craniotomy.

Patient was level one trauma for fall from roof, had a scan, read by surgeon and supposedly by radiology as a brain bleed. Ran patient from trauma bay directly to OR. No consent possible, waived per life or d***h emergency protocol, surgeon performed time-out themselves, stated left side craniotomy for hematoma, left side prepped and draped.

Procedure began, skull flap created... no hematoma is found. Assisting PA breaks scrub, runs over to the computer, pulls up the imaging... it's a right-sided hematoma. I don't personally know if it was really read by radiology pre-op, actually only read by the surgeon incorrectly, or he simply forgot which side it was and didn't verify.

Regardless of the cause, that patient had the wrong side of their skull cut open. The correct craniotomy was performed immediately after, but I do not know how the delay effected their outcome.

Probably that kid that was just misdiagnosed as being d**d and waking up in the morgue.

Surgeon took out a section of colon. Normally the proximal section (the part connected to the small intestine) would be brought through a new hole in the abdominal wall, forming a colostomy.

Somehow the surgeon accidentally made the ostomy out of the distal segment (connected to the r****m) and sewed the proximal end shut thinking it was the rectal stump.

Patient had a bowel perforation on post op day 2 or 3 from food/tube feeds being fed into a gut with a blind ending. I believe the patient ended up dying during that hospitalization.

I was 39 weeks pregnant. I had upper abdominal pain, lost 20lbs, excruciating back pain, high blood pressure and my son was less than 5 lbs yet Dr's refused to check on him because "it's not hospital policy". I had HELLP Syndrome, a severe form of pre-eclampsia that can k**l the mother. I was failed by every OBGYN I saw and every ER dr. My son died. My husband and I tried to go after them for medical malpractice but because the "official" cause of d***h was a blood clot, we couldn't find a lawyer will to take our case.

As a hospital pharmacist, I’d say the NECC compounding crisis of 2012. Not so much an error but a disgusting amount of violations with regard to sterile compounding that led to hundreds of patients dying from fungal meningitis. It changed the way we practice. It put the fear of God into me.

Back in my ER nurse days, I caught a fellow nurse hanging 40 MEQ of iv K (potassium) wide open…no iv pump!!!! I immediately stopped the pump and disconnected the line, flushed with saline and then informed the nurse he almost gave the patient a lethal injection. He laughed and said he was only following the order. I showed him the order which clearly stated the very slow rate of 10 MEQ/hr…and informed him of the many safety checks required to give potassium iv, which he had not completed. I told the charge nurse, doc, and filed an incident report.
Second story involving the same negligent nurse: doc ordered a urinary catheter on an 82 year old female patient. After 20 minutes, the same nurse came out of the patient’s room quite frustrated at not being able to place the catheter, and he asked if I would try. I entered the room and found the patient crying out in pain at the previous nurse’s attempts. I explained the need for the catheter and asked if I could take a look and try. She agreed. What I saw next made my insides hurt. Her clitoris was quite red/inflamed/bruised…like someone took a hammer to it!!!!! I quickly located the correct hole: the urethra…not to be mistaken with the clitoris…and I placed the catheter. I immediately informed the nurse who tried to catheterize her clitoris the reason he was unsuccessful. He denied any mistake on his part. I held firm and informed him that it was very obvious, by assessing the patient, that he did NOT know basic female anatomy, and the clitoris is NOT a hole or even remotely similar to the urethra. I wrote up and incident report and informed the charge nurse. He remained cocky and resolute in his complete idiocy. He did not work there much longer.

There’s a rule in medicine not to use trailing zeros. Which is when you put a .0 after a number.

A doctor wrote (back in paper prescription days) an order for 10.0 units of insulin (a normal amount of insulin. And the nurse gave 100 units of insulin (you would very rarely* bolus this much insulin at once)

The patient had a hypoglycemic emergency and permanent brain damage from the seizures. The doctor should have known not to write an order like that and the nurse should have known not to give that much insulin without verifying the order.

Patient had come in with shortness of breath.
Unfortunately, known cancer and needed drainage of a pleural effusion. (Build up of fluid between lung ans chest wall)

Unfortunately, donkeys years ago we used trocars. Think long sharp metal tube that could become hollow.

The chap doing the procedure went too far with the trochar and um. Drained the patients heart.

We were not a cardiothoracic unit.

Nothing could be done.

Surgery on the wrong knee of teenage girl basketball player!