Catastrophic brain injuries resulting from medical malpractice cause an enormous financial toll to hospitals and the families of injured victims. An ischemic brain injury occurs when there is insufficient blood flow to the brain or to a part of the brain, such as when the blood supply to the baby's brain is blocked from the umbilical cord or placenta; or when the blood supply to the brain of an adult is blocked by a blood clot. A hypoxic brain injury occurs when the brain is deprived of sufficient oxygen for a prolonged period of time.
Many catastrophic brain injuries are preventable, such as a hypoxic brain injury to an adult occurring because the patient's underlying condition for entering the hospital in the first place worsens, causing respiratory or cardiac arrest. A newborn child's preventable hypoxic brain injury may be the result of the condition of the uterus having deteriorated and causing injury before the birth, and the doctors or nurses failed to recognize the condition and take the proper action to prevent the severe brain injury from occurring.
There are often several causes responsible for preventable severe hypoxic or ischemic brain injuries, including inadequate communication between the medical staff, improper assumptions of the medical staff, and the mentality of healthcare providers.
One major problem involving preventable catastrophic injuries in hospitals is inadequate communication between the medical staff. This may involve a lack of proper communication between multiple doctors, multiple nurses, or between doctors and nurses. If multiple staff members are at fault for the miscommunication, it may be difficult to trace the root cause or prevent the problem from reoccurring.
Another problem involves improper assumptions of the medical staff. For example, if a nurse who enters a new shift, improperly assumes the nurse exiting the previous shift did not give medication to the patient, when in fact the nurse did, this may result in the new shift nurse giving additional medication to the patient, possibly causing an overdose. The same miscommunication may occur if both nurses assume the other nurse gave the medication when in fact neither nurse administered medication, therefore possibly causing another severe injury to the patient. Doctors may also believe nurses have handled certain patient care responsibilities, when in fact the nurses may not have handled these responsibilities. This type of improper assumptions have a greater probability of occurring in hospitals with higher turnover rate as the medical staff have not had enough time to familiarize themselves with how various medical staff members handle their daily routines.
The mentality of healthcare providers is an area of medical malpractice that is often neglected. Many doctors and nurses focus their education on specific medical skills, while neglecting to familiarize themselves with other medical skills. If a patient arrives with medical needs beyond the scope of the doctor or nurse, the doctor or nurse may not ask for help from another doctor or nurse, until the problem is critical. Their own pride may stand in the way and this may result in a severe medical emergency for the patient.
Doctors or nurses may also fail to recognize warning signs from the equipment they are using to monitor the patient. The monitoring equipment may be warning the medical staff, but the staff may believe the machine is malfunctioning and either ignore the warnings or try to adjust the machine, losing precious time to prevent a potentially catastrophic event from occurring.
Most medical staff have a difficult time trying to understand why legal liability flows from the nature of the injury or death, rather than from the recklessness of their actions. As a result of this medical-legal disconnect, and the fact that nurses and doctors can't maintain a constant state of high alert, preventable catastrophic injuries will continue to occur in hospitals and even though such injuries may be completely out of proportion to the actions of the doctors or nurses, the financial impact to the doctors and hospitals will be based on the outcome of those actions.