Should You Go To Jail For Medical Errors?

I’m not looking to give a lecture or deliver a lot of input on this one. I’m really uncertain how I feel about this and I’d like To hear what you all think. What do you all think about medical caregivers receiving jail time for medical errors that contribute to bad patient outcomes? It’s not just conjecture. We have two recent cases on the books now of medical practitioners facing jail time for mistakes they made on the job. First there was Julie Thao, the nurse who faced felony manslaughter charges for administering a high dose anesthesia to a pregnant 16 year old female (she thought it was a prescribed antibiotic) The patient died but the baby lived. Now we have the case of Eric Cropp a pharmacist who signed off on an improperly mixed dosage of Chemo which later killed a young child. Eric pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and his hasty signature on the bag will net him 6 months in prison, 6 months of probation and community service. I can see both sides of this. Jail time is certainly going to affect voluntary admissions and investigations of medical errors. Would you come clean about a medical error if it meant that you might spend time in a jail cell? When I wrote the article Fallible Medicine, I made a big deal out of the idea that seeking out flaws in the system is the most effective way to reduce human error. If the goal is to understand why we make these kinds of errors and improve the systems to avoid them in the future, criminal charges ...
Source: The EMT Spot - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: EMT Source Type: blogs