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Physicians may ask you to sign an informed consent document while under their care. An informed consent document, when signed, indicates the patient understands the potential risks and benefits of a proposed course of treatment and gives the health care provider permission to perform that service. Being asked to sign a consent form is typical…

Your first thought might be that having bed rails is most certainly safer than not having them. In reality, they offer a mix of benefits and drawbacks for young children and the elderly. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as many as 803 patients in hospitals and nursing homes were injured or died…

According to the most recently available data from 2010, the total annual cost of medical malpractice in the United States is around $55.6 billion. As of that time, the amount was 2.4% of all healthcare spending. The number seems very high when you first look at it, but considering it is only 2.4% of all…

Not every failure to diagnose is considered medical malpractice. There are many good reasons why a physician may have hesitated or avoided diagnosing a condition. Sometimes patient-doctor communication may be to blame. In other cases, symptom profiles may closely mimic other conditions that are more common in society. Since the right answer is often the…

Many surgeries are considered elective which means they are not emergency procedures or necessary to preserve a patient’s health. Rather, they are surgeries patients choose to have done as a preventative measure, as a result of medical diagnoses, for quality of life, or for superficial reasons. However, that does not mean they are any less…

Surgeons have tough jobs. Not only do they have to know the human body like the backs of their own hands, they must also take into account an individual’s personal medical history and balance all of the information under time constraints and in high-pressure environments. Unfortunately, mistakes do happen in those settings. Surgical errors are…

The most common surgeries in the United States are so routine that many people do not think twice about their associated dangers. The majority of these common surgical procedures, in-patient and out-patient, are second nature procedures for surgeons. They complete them as a matter of routine, and most go according to plan. However, popular procedures…

When a commercial for sleeping pills comes on television or you seen an advertisement in a magazine, you may glaze over the exhaustive list of warnings and side effects. Pharmaceutical companies are required by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to list the potential dangers and side effects in any marketing campaign, but that does…

Doctors, nurses, and technicians who work around patients with monitoring systems every day face a barrage of beeps, signals, and flashing lights. More often than not, the noise is indicating something benign, such as a button reset. Other times, however, the alarms can signal a life or death moment. This over-stimulation of light and sound…

Brain injuries are often some of the most surprising injuries because the range of accidents that produce them is vast. Many minor injuries, like a concussion, go away on their own with rest and observation. Other injuries are more severe and can affect your or your loved one’s life in a meaningful way. Knowing who…