Bad practice or malpractice ?

[leesumm]

Mena, Ark.
May 26th , 2009 I woke up with chest pains, they continued to get worse and the pain spread thru the arms and face. My wife took me to the local hospital where I walked into the E.R. I told the receptionist of the pains in the chest and other places. I was given a stack of papers and was told to have a seat and fill them out someone would be around to help me. After a few minutes of no one showing up my wife went and found an attendant who immediatly put me in a wheel chair and wheeled me into the E.R. Another nurse took two stabs at my right hand with an IV needle and said she couldnt find a vien. My viens are very prominant in my hands a blind person could find them. Then she went to the left hand and stabed two more times wriggling the needle in and out and around. The guy who wheeled me in shaved my chest and hooked up some electrodes. After a couple of minutes they said you had a heart attack where do you want to go? Hot Springs or Ft. Smith ?
Never having had a heart attack or been in any other hospital I didnt know and blindly choose Ft. Smith. The replied good , an ambulance is on the way and be here in a half an hour. I spent 3 days in ICU and had two stents put in . My aterial aterry was 99% blocked and another was 3% blocked. The day I was supposed to go home the attending doctor said someone gave me too much of a good medicine and my bloold was too thin to be released safely. So I spent another day needlessly.

This is a brief run down of a heart attack care recieved in Mena, Ark
Is this just bad practice or malpractice ?

[ecmst12]

I see neither bad practice nor malpractice. There's a reason they test your clotting before they release you from the hospital on blood thinners. It's a bummer that your first nurse wasn't good at starting IVs but nowhere near the realm of malpractice.

Also, I don't think just because your veins are prominent, necessarily means they are easy to stick.

[lealea1005]

Ditto to ecmst's post.

Just because a blind person can see your veins doesn't make them an easy stick. There are a myriad of reasons, other than the lack of skill by the person inserting the IV, that you were a difficult stick.

It was appropriate, not unnecessary, to keep you in the hospital an additional day to monitor your medication and platelet count. It would have been negligent to discharge you otherwise.

With the possible exception that the initial receptionist didn't understand the seriousness of your symptoms, the care you received was well within the standard of care.

[leesumm]

I can understand the addtional day or so in the hospital to monitor blood and such. But if my blood had been monitored correctly to begin with ,without "giving too much of a good medicine " as the attending physian had said the problem and reason for the extended stay . There might not have been a problem
I know in the future for the care and treatment I recieved in the first hospital I would rather take my chances of dying and go to another hospital rather than go the local "first aide" station as some of the local residents call it .

[ecmst12]

Why do you assume there was a dosing error? Every medicine affects every body a little differently. You could have been given the correct dose for your weight and it could have simply been too effective. Again, that is why they do the test before you are released, because they don't know how well the medicine works on each person until they DO the test. It simply takes time for the blood clotting to stabilize when you are switched from the IV blood thinners to the oral ones and the right dose needs to be verified by the test. And the best place for you to be if your clotting has not stabilized is IN THE HOSPITAL. It's not an indication of any error at all and in fact, means that the hospital was doing its job CORRECTLY by not releasing you until your test results were within the expected limits.

The attending physician simply gave you an over-simplified explanation. If you'd asked more questions, you might have gotten better answers even then.

[lya]

This is one of those times when the physician needs to be smacked up side the head for not giving a proper explanation.

ecmst12's answer is correct.