Why emergency room doctors make mistakes

To understand why doctors make mistakes in the ER, all you really have to consider is the environment that the emergency room creates. When you think about what it’s like in that room during peak hours, mistakes seem almost inevitable.

An emergency room, after all, is incredibly busy and chaotic. There are no schedules. Doctors could suddenly see an influx of patients. In a normal hospital setting, they know when people are coming and they can be staffed properly. In the ER, everything happens without warning and it can be overwhelming.

Add to that the fact that some patients need emergency care and others do not. A doctor may have to decide in a split second who to treat. What if they choose wrong? A patient could die waiting for care that they’ll never get because a doctor thought someone else’s condition was more pressing.

Beyond that, doctors in the ER see patients for many reasons. Parents may have a choking baby. An elderly patient may have suffered a stroke. Teens may have been involved in a violent car accident. An adult may have overdosed on drugs — though no one may know what they took, how much they took or when they took it.

In a setting like this, doctors are bound to make mistakes. They’re going to overlook things. They’re going to make the wrong diagnosis or provide the wrong treatment.

Unfortunately, when a doctor is negligent, patients suffer. They know that patients in the ER deserve expert care from the best medical professionals in the field. If they don’t provide that level of care and make avoidable errors, that’s when patients and family members may have to know what legal options they have If you suffered injuries due to a mistake in the emergency room or your loved one was hurt, it may be time to seek more experienced guidance.