Most Common Medical Errors

What’s the difference between a medical error and a complication? Complications can happen even with good care. Errors happen when doctors, nurses, or other health professionals don’t meet basic care standards. Human factors and workplace culture often contribute to these errors. As a patient in Illinois, you have the right to know what happened, get proper care, and receive payment for harm caused by these mistakes.

In this guide, we’ll look at nine common types of medical errors. From wrong medications to mixed-up patient records, these errors cause serious harm and cost billions in extra medical care. Root cause investigation often shows these errors come from system failures rather than just one person’s mistake. Public health experts work to reduce these errors through better systems and effective communication.

1. Medication Errors in Healthcare

Medication errors are among the most common mistakes in healthcare. When doctors or nurses give the wrong drug or dose, the results can be harmful or even deadly. These errors happen in hospitals, long-term care facilities, and primary care settings.

Administering Incorrect Drugs or Dosages

Healthcare workers sometimes calculate drug doses wrong. This happens with weight-based drugs or when patients have kidney problems. High-alert drugs like insulin and blood thinners are especially risky. Even a small mistake can cause a harmful overdose. Wrong dose errors often happen because of math errors or misreading the dosage form.

Look-alike and sound-alike drugs create big risks. Medications with similar names get mixed up easily. For example, hydroxyzine (for anxiety) and hydralazine (for blood pressure) sound alike but treat very different medical conditions. Without proper checks, you might get the wrong medication. Wrong drug errors can cause allergic reactions or make your medical condition worse. Each type of medication error carries its own risk factors.

Dangerous Medication Combinations

Drug-drug interactions happen when medications don’t mix well. Some combinations can make drugs too strong or cancel out their good effects. For instance, certain antibiotics mixed with blood thinners can cause serious bleeding. These adverse drug events often result from a lack of medication reconciliation.

Poor communication between your doctors often causes these problems. Electronic health records should catch these issues, but a breakdown in care coordination between your healthcare team members puts you at risk. The error rate for these preventable errors remains too high. Adverse drug reactions from these interactions can lead to emergency room visits and hospital stays. Drug dependence issues can also complicate medication safety.

Pharmacy Dispensing Errors

Both retail and hospital pharmacies make dispensing errors. In retail settings, illegible handwriting on prescriptions leads to wrong medication. In hospitals, overworked pharmacy staff may skip important safety checks. Documentation errors occur when important patient information doesn’t get recorded correctly.

One common form of error happens when pharmacy staff misread doctors’ handwriting. This can result in the wrong drug, wrong dose, or wrong instructions. These preventable errors show why effective communication between health professionals matters so much. Wrong plan errors happen when pharmacists misinterpret prescription instructions. Adult patients with complex medical histories face higher risks from these errors.

2. Surgical Mistakes and Complications

Operating on Wrong Site or Patient

Before any surgery, the surgical team should confirm they have the right patient and the correct surgery site. When they skip this “Time Out” protocol, they might operate on the wrong body part or even the wrong patient.

The Joint Commission calls these “Never Events” because they should never happen. Yet each year, patients wake up to find surgeons operated on the wrong part of their body. These sentinel events often start with mixed-up medical records or poor communication.

Anesthesia Administration Errors

Anesthesia errors happen when doctors give too much or too little medication. Anesthesiologists must carefully check your weight, age, and health before giving these drugs. Wrong doses can cause you to wake up during surgery or suffer brain damage.

Monitoring failures also cause harm. During surgery, your vital signs need constant checking. If the medical staff misses signs of problems, you could suffer permanent harm. We’ve helped families whose loved ones died from these preventable errors.

Retained Surgical Objects

Surgeons sometimes leave tools, sponges, or other items inside patients’ bodies. Before closing an incision, surgical teams should count every item used. When this process fails, foreign objects remain inside you.

These mistakes cause infection, pain, and the need for more surgeries. Patients often suffer for months before finding out what’s wrong. X-rays finally reveal the left-behind tools or sponges. These types of medical errors are completely preventable with proper safety measures.

3. Infections Acquired in Medical Facilities

Contaminated Medical Equipment

Medical tools must be cleaned properly between patients. Complex tools like endoscopes have tiny spaces where germs hide. When cleaning steps get rushed, dangerous bacteria spread from one patient to another.

Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections occur when IV lines become contaminated. These infections are serious because bacteria enter directly into your blood. Simple steps like hand washing and proper line care prevent these infections, but many healthcare workers still skip these basic steps.

Antibiotic-Resistant Infections

MRSA and other “superbugs” spread easily in hospitals. These tough bacteria resist most common antibiotics. They spread through contact with contaminated surfaces or when healthcare staff don’t change gloves between patients.

Good hospital hygiene stops these outbreaks. Regular cleaning, proper isolation of sick patients, and strict hand washing can reduce infection rates. When healthcare organizations cut corners on these safety steps, patients suffer harm.

Post-Surgical Infection Cases

Surgical Site Infections happen in about 2-5% of surgeries. These infections start when bacteria enter through incision sites. Common causes include dirty tools, poor skin cleaning before surgery, or improper surgical technique.

When doctors dismiss early infection signs as normal pain, infections can spread quickly. A simple wound infection can turn into life-threatening sepsis. These adverse events require intensive care and more surgeries that could have been avoided with proper care.

4. Mistakes in Medical Diagnosis

Diagnostic errors affect 1 in 20 patients. These mistakes turn treatable conditions into medical emergencies. When doctors miss warning signs or read test results wrong, you lose precious treatment time.

Late Cancer Diagnosis

Doctors sometimes fail to order the cancer screening tests that are needed. When they miss early warning signs or skip recommended tests, cancer grows undetected. Radiologists might also miss signs on mammograms or CT scans.

When cancer spreads because of delayed diagnosis, treatment options shrink. We’ve helped many clients whose treatable early-stage cancers became terminal illnesses because of these errors. The difference between early and late diagnosis can be life or death.

Laboratory Test Misinterpretation

Radiology reading errors happen when doctors miss abnormalities in imaging studies. They might not see fractures, tumors, or other problems on X-rays or scans. These mistakes happen due to fatigue, inexperience, or simply human error.

Mix-ups with tissue samples cause serious harm, too. When labs mislabel or confuse samples between patients, you might get the treatment you don’t need while your real disease goes untreated. These medical errors show why patient safety culture matters at every step.

Missed Emergency Conditions

Emergency rooms sometimes miss heart attacks and strokes. When patients come in with arm pain, shortness of breath, or dizziness, busy ER staff might think it’s just anxiety. Every minute counts with these conditions, making fast, correct diagnosis crucial.

Triage mistakes happen when seriously ill patients get marked as non-urgent. In busy ERs, staff might not recognize warning signs of internal bleeding or severe infections. We’ve seen cases where patients waited for hours while their condition got worse because of poor assessment.

5. Patient Fall Incidents in Hospitals

Lack of Fall Prevention Measures

Bed alarms warn staff when high-risk patients try to get up alone. But these alarms only work when they’re turned on and staff respond quickly. We’ve seen cases where alarms were turned off for being “too sensitive” or where understaffed units couldn’t respond fast enough.

Inadequate staffing causes many falls. When nurses have too many patients, they can’t watch everyone closely. Night shifts and weekends often have fewer staff even though patients need the same care. Without enough healthcare workers, even good hospitals can’t prevent falls.

High-Risk Patient Monitoring Failures

Patients with confusion or dementia need extra watching. They may not remember to call for help before getting up. These patients need frequent checks and rooms near nursing stations for closer monitoring.

Many drugs used in hospitals cause dizziness or balance problems. Pain medications, sleep aids, and psychiatric drugs increase fall risk. When healthcare providers don’t adjust monitoring based on these medication effects, patients may try to walk alone while unsteady.

Unsafe Hospital Conditions

Wet floors cause preventable falls. Spills should be marked and cleaned right away, yet we often see cases where liquids remain on floors in patient areas. Even small water spills can cause serious falls for unsteady patients.

Poor lighting makes nighttime falls more likely. Hallways and bathrooms need good lighting, yet many facilities have dim areas, especially at night. Simply fixing lighting could prevent many injuries each year in healthcare settings.

6. Pressure Injury Cases

Pressure injuries (also called bedsores) develop when patients stay in one position too long. These painful wounds start as skin redness but can quickly expose muscle and bone. For bedridden patients, these injuries show serious care failures.

Failure to Rotate Bedridden Patients

Healthcare workers should turn immobile patients at least every two hours. This prevents pressure on any one spot for too long. Yet this basic care often gets skipped in busy or understaffed units.

When pressure ulcers progress beyond the early stages, they show extended neglect. Stage 1 shows reddened skin. By Stage 2, the skin breaks open. Later stages expose deeper tissues and bone. We’ve helped clients whose bedsores led to bone infections because basic care was missed.

Inadequate Nutrition Monitoring

Poor nutrition makes pressure sores more likely. Without enough protein and calories, your body can’t maintain healthy skin or heal wounds. Yet staff often pay too little attention to what patients eat, especially those who can’t feed themselves.

Even with good turning and positioning, malnourished patients develop pressure injuries more easily. When healthcare facilities don’t track food intake or consult dietitians, they miss a key part of preventing these painful wounds.

Severe Ulcer Development

Advanced pressure injuries expose bone and muscle. These deep wounds take months to heal and often need surgery. The cost of treating these preventable wounds far exceeds the cost of proper prevention.

Serious pressure injuries often lead to life-threatening infections. Once bacteria enter these deep wounds, they can spread to the bloodstream, causing sepsis. Patients who come to hospitals for minor problems have died from infections starting with preventable pressure sores. Pressure sores are a major warning sign of neglect in healthcare settings. Mode effect analysis shows these injuries are almost always preventable with basic care.

7. Patient Identification Errors

Procedures Performed on Wrong Patients

Hospital rules require checking wristbands before procedures. Yet in busy settings, staff sometimes skip this step. Sometimes bands are missing, hard to read, or have wrong information. Other times, staff simply don’t check properly.

Surgical mix-ups show the worst form of patient identification errors. Patients have had unnecessary surgeries because they were confused with other patients. These errors usually involve multiple failures rather than just one mistake.

Medication and Blood Product Mix-ups

Getting the wrong blood type can be deadly. When patients receive incompatible blood due to identification errors, severe reactions happen within minutes. The body attacks the foreign blood cells, causing kidney failure, shock, and sometimes death.

For every harmful mix-up that happens, many more near-misses get caught just in time. These close calls should lead to better systems but often go unreported. When healthcare facilities don’t learn from almost-mistakes, they miss chances to prevent future harm.

Newborn Identification Errors

Hospital nurseries need strict security to prevent mix-ups. Though rare, babies have been sent home with the wrong families due to identification errors. Modern systems include matching bands for mothers and babies, but mistakes still happen during busy times.

The effects of these errors can last a lifetime. Families may raise children who aren’t biologically theirs, and medical decisions may be based on the wrong family health history. Few medical errors have such far-reaching impacts.

Why These Errors Constitute Medical Malpractice

When medical errors cause harm, patients deserve compensation. Not every bad outcome counts as malpractice, but when healthcare providers fall below basic care standards and cause preventable harm, they should be held responsible.

Breach of Standard of Care

Illinois law sets standards for what healthcare providers should do in specific situations. When they fail to meet these standards—by missing obvious symptoms or skipping safety steps—they breach their duty to patients. Healthcare institutions must maintain standards of care across all departments.

Medical experts help explain these standards in court. They show what should have happened versus what actually happened. This expert testimony helps judges and juries understand complex medical issues and determine if care fell below acceptable standards. Errors of commission (doing something wrong) are often easier to prove than errors of omission (failing to do something). A medical malpractice attorney knows how to establish these failures through medical records and expert review.

Establishing Provider Liability

Sometimes, errors come from individual mistakes; other times, system failures create conditions where errors are likely. Often, both factors play a role. We analyze each case to find all responsible parties. Legal actions can target both individuals and the healthcare organizations that employ them.

Hospitals can be held responsible for their employees’ actions on the job. This legal principle lets us hold healthcare institutions accountable for staff errors. This ensures you can get fair compensation even when individual providers have limited insurance. Healthcare staff and the healthcare industry as a whole have responsibilities to keep patients safe. Our medical malpractice lawyer works to identify all causative factors in your case.

Proving Preventable Harm

To win a malpractice case, we must show the provider’s negligence directly caused your harm. This link between the error and your injuries must be clear. For example, we must prove that “but for” the medication error, you wouldn’t have suffered kidney damage. Actual failures must be tied directly to your adverse outcome.

Compensation includes medical costs, lost income, pain, and future care needs. When medical errors cause permanent disability or ongoing health problems, these future expenses must be carefully calculated to ensure you receive full payment for both past and future harm. Clinical outcomes are key to establishing damages. Healthcare costs related to fixing the error are recoverable. When medical costs pile up from someone else’s mistake, you deserve compensation.

Contact Our Medical Malpractice Lawyer for a Free Consultation

Don’t wait until it’s too late. Illinois has strict deadlines for filing medical malpractice claims. Contact us today to schedule your confidential meeting with our medical malpractice lawyer. From equipment failures to errors in hospitals, we can help make sure you get the compensation you deserve while helping keep other patients safe.