Most people expect that a physician operating on the wrong body part — or on the wrong person — is a rare occurrence. However, wrong-site surgeries are more common than you think. A 2010 study reported by CNN found that wrong-patient and wrong-site procedures made up about 0.5 percent of all medical mistakes studied. In fact, the study noted doctors in Colorado operated on the wrong part of a patient’s body 107 times and on the wrong patient 25 times during the course of the six-year study.
The terrible damages that occur when a doctor removes the wrong leg or subjects the wrong patient to surgery, make it imperative that steps be taken to make this types of medical malpractice disappear. PubMed.Gov discusses some of the procedures that doctors and hospitals can implement to make sure wrong site and wrong person surgeries do not occur:
If you have been injured as a result of medical malpractice by a physician, nurse, hospital or other health care provider, a certified experienced New Jersey personal injury attorney can help.