Compensation for oncological injury
Oncological injury – We are talking about 90 deaths per day attributable to medical errors and oncology, among other specialist departments guilty of harming their patients, they are responsible for13% of these errors, preceded only by the orthopaedics department.
This is according to the view of experts who have promised to organise a conference in an effort to put an end to the high percentage of errors occurring in the operating room (32%), closely followed by wards (28%), of those (22) in emergency and (18) in clinics.
Compensation for oncological injury
There are less detailed figures to be found for the most common errors in oncology (oncological injuries), even if there are still a high number of cases caused by mixing up drugs with similar names to one another, for example paraplatino, cisplatin and oxaliplatin.
Mixing up medical records, or charts written in an incomprehensible manner which leads to errors in diagnosis and treatment are often attributable to a chaotic work environment and poor organization, as well as confusion during prescribed examination, radiation treatments poorly conducted which cause burns, excessive use of X-rays which is often unnecessary, an incorrect dosage of anesthesia or a poor attention to informed consent procedures.
Prescription which go beyond their therapeutic indications or deficiency in the assessment of the states of patients can cause serious problems, especially during chemotherapy where data on vital signs, allergies and toxicity must always be taken with extreme precision and be constantly monitored.
The media have complained for example about the case of a cancer patient of advanced years who was urged to sign an informed consent form for a course of experimental chemotherapy unsuited to their physical condition and which immediately caused severe bleeding complications and the subsequent death of patient.
Also with regard to pharmaceuticals, which in the oncology department seems to cause more victims than road accidents, significant harm is attributable to the lack of compliance with the administration durations and incorrect storage, not protecting photosensitive drugs or temperature sensitive drugs from the elements .
Delaying the commencement of therapy can also result in misdiagnosis or a delay in the evaluation and treatment of serious illness can cause grave problems.
Practically 50% of oncology errors come in the prescriptive stages due to a lack of knowledge of the patients medical history or non-existent histories and the non-prescription of an appropriate therapy. Transcription errors during therapy add up to around 14.5%. In this regard, and only referring to errors in the field of oncology, the Health authority recently issued a document with technical indications which puts the responsibility for the preparation of cancer drugs , even in cases of emergency, on the pharmacist alone and calls for computerization of the prescription processes.