Emergency Room Errors

Emergency rooms are chaotic places where decisions must be made quickly and accurately. While doctors and nurses are trained to act in emergency situations, sometimes they make mistakes that cause patients injuries and even death.

Some examples of emergency room errors are:

• Inaccurate assessment during the triage or intake process
• Failure to diagnose heart attack, aneurysm, stroke, meningitis, pulmonary embolism, respiratory distress
• Administering wrong medications
• Not timely treating a patient
• Turning a patient away / failure to admit
• Providing inadequate specialist referral
• “Patient dumping” – refusing to provide treatment to patients without health insurance or means to pay
• Discharging too early, or giving insufficient discharge instructions

Errors can be attributed to:

• Inadequate staff screening
• Understaffing of doctors, nurses and support staff
• Long wait periods where conditions can worsen
• Inadequate patient screening and tracking
• Poor record-keeping
• Poor sanitation and hygiene
• Unenforced policies and standards
• Misread or misinterpreted test results