How Medical Errors Are Affecting Families

During the late 1800s, life expectancy was at its lowest points, with age 36 as the average human lifespan. As healthcare and medicine progressed significantly through the years, life expectancy skyrocketed as well, now giving people more years to live at an average of 78 years old. Advancements in healthcare, medicine, and technology deserve all the credit for this breakthrough. As the years pass, medical professionals try to find more ways to improve healthcare and medicine.

However, the medical industry has shortcomings as well. Annually, 250,000 deaths were reported to be caused solely by medical errors in the United States. This mortality rate is quite alarming, as medical mistakes are difficult to recognize unless one has arrived at the worst condition. While errors continue to spread within the medical context, families should be aware of what’s to come. That said, how do medical errors affect families?

Emotional Impact

Patients exert significant efforts to make their health better, and so do their families. This is precisely why medical errors inflicted upon patients cast a massive shadow on their loved ones and relatives. Because they have entrusted the patient’s health and well-being to medical professionals and healthcare providers, suffering medical errors that have caused irreparable damage to the patient can come as an emotional blow to their families. This is especially true if the patient died, which can be extremely difficult to accept for families, particularly for parents who have lost a child resulting from medical errors.

While it is not entirely helpful to individually blame doctors, it cannot be denied that families might be inclined to do so as they have entrusted the life of their loved one with the doctor. They would naturally expect the patient to be cured, and that the doctor would do everything in their capacity to look after the patient’s well-being. Medical errors are the last thing they would expect, and when it does happen, emotions could flare up, and the resulting tragedy or damage could leave trauma that would haunt families for years. They could also suffer from anxiety and depression as a consequence of the medical error their loved one suffered.

Psychological Impact

Aside from emotional distress, medical errors can psychologically impact the patient’s family. The idea of searching for professional healthcare may likely become unclear to them. Families may develop the wrong impression about hospital and health institutions after the unfortunate incident, causing further loss of trust and fear of receiving medical attention again, especially in the same hospital that committed the medical error. If these families decide to stop seeking medical care, their overall health will be compromised. They might be suffering from underlying health complications, but due to their refusal to seek medical attention, they will be unaware of the current state of their health until it might be too late.

Some family members may even blame themselves about why the medical error happened even though it could be completely out of their hands. They may lead themselves to believe that they’ve committed some form of neglect such as inconsistent attention, not being able to ask the medical experts enough questions, and not being able to foresee the worst scenarios that could take place. Their feeling of hopelessness can turn into anger and resentment, and much like the emotional impacts they could experience, these can also have negative effects on their lifestyle, health, and well-being.

While some doctors have confessed their mistakes regarding medical errors, it may be hard to change a family’s mindset once they have experienced this kind of situation.

Financial Impact

It is no surprise that medical treatments can be costly, especially for illnesses that may require several medications, procedures, and even machinery that could help alleviate the patient’s condition. Medical errors that involve complicated procedures such as surgery can undoubtedly dent a family’s finances. An error in a procedure could lead to additional medication or further surgeries, especially if the patient’s condition begins to deteriorate. More often that not, medical errors are not detected until much later, when the patient’s condition or illness is already irreversible or when the family has already spent for numerous procedures, thinking that these will help cure their loved one.

If the patient dies as a result of the medical error, funeral and burial costs will likely be added on top of the medical bills they have to pay for. If the deceased patient happens to be the breadwinner in the family, further financial strain can burden their next of kin as they have lost the person primarily supporting their finances and survival.

Conclusion

Health professionals and institutions do their best to attend to people’s medical and healthcare needs. In unfortunate circumstances, medical errors inevitably happen, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that doctors and physicians are at fault. While medical errors greatly affect patients and their families, medical professionals also experience negative impacts. Nevertheless, everyone should perform extra caution and attention to make sure that medical errors are greatly minimized.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes.