An adverse event (AE) is any change in a human or animal that is not expected or desired. These changes can be good or bad!
They can include serious health concerns, such as cancer treatment and recovery, to more minor concerns, such as chronic pain.
Traditionally, patients were the only victims of an AE, but with the growth of medical professions and healthcare, there are more victims than just the patient.
Victims can be family members, close friends, next-of-kin-saves, anyone who may be affected by the AE! Even though the victim may be only a witness to the event, they still need help healing from it.
More and more times, victims are people with disabilities.
Their family
In some cases, a patient may be prescribed a medication that is considered to be very addictive. This can be a problem for some families.
Many times, physicians do not notify the family of a patient who is prescribed an addictive medication. This can be a problem for the patients’ family members.
It is important for the parents and grandparents of a patient to know what kind of medication their loved one is taking, as some drugs can have side effects.
Parents and grandparents often do not seek out such information themselves, especially when it comes to medications.
It is critical for these individuals to know what they are missing out on when it comes to caring for their loved ones with an addiction.
Their friends
In order for a patient to seek legal recourse against their doctor or hospital, they must formally report their adverse event to a medical authority. This includes contacting friends and family members who were also treated by the doctor or hospital, as well as other patients who suffered the same symptoms.
By reporting an adverse event only to a medical authority, Dr. Wu argues that another victim of the mistake — your friend or family member — is excluded. He argues that this creates a double-edged sword: “[F]olks who aren’t formally reported can still suffer negative consequences from the mistake,” he says.
Dr. Wu is not alone in thinking this way. A 2016 survey conducted by pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly found that 44% of physicians and surgeons believed that reporting an adverse event to a medical authority was “too difficult” or “inconceivable” for patients with little medical experience. Only 12% said it was unnecessary.
Their caregivers
According to Dr. Albert Wu, a patient may be considered a “second victim” if their adverse event befales their caregivers. This may apply in cases where a patient is not in the care of a healthcare provider but who have friends, relatives, or neighbors who care for them.
This can happen when there is too much stress on the person being cared for as they move through the stages of life. For example, they are diagnosed with a serious illness and begin receiving treatment at an early stage of life when health was more permanent.
They continue to depend on family and friends when they are unable to receive treatment themselves, resulting in another adverse event that befales someone else. This can happen repeatedly, leading to overreliance on medical care which results in additional stress and harm.
Medical staff involved in the patient’s care
In some cases, medical staff are directly involved in an adverse event. In these cases, the doctor or person responsible for medical training is aware of the training and doesn’t adequately protect the patient.
Who is It Good For?
In this case, the doctor or person responsible for medical training should read and re-read the relevant medical training to make sure they’ve covered all of the important points.
If they haven’t, then another person with no legal or medical responsibilities can take on that responsibility. This person could also read and re-read their current medical training to make sure they’ve covered all of the important points.
If they have covered all of the important points, but not done enough to protect the patient, then it is their responsibility to seek out additional training to make sure they cover what they needed to in this case.
The hospital where the patient was treated
The second victim of an adverse event is the hospital or medical facility where the patient was treated. This victim can be the hospital’s patients who were harmed by the treatment they received, or it can be other patients who were harmed by the same treatment.
The law implies that when one patient receives a harm from a treatment, all of his or her patients at other hospitals and medical facilities must also receive the treatment. This is because each time a patient receives a harm from a treatment, another person at another location may receive it as well.
Under federal law, this happens as soon as one person’s harm becomes known to another person’s job. That is, once one person reports a harm to another person at work, that individual can assume that duty for himself or herself.
Insurance companies
As described in the bullet point, a patient may be affected by an adverse event without their doctor’s knowledge. This can happen when:
A patient is prescribed a medication they do not understand or tolerate.
A patient is diagnosed with a condition and prescribed medication that does not work.
For instance, if the patient believes they are helping themselves by taking the medication, it may be difficult for them to realize that it is not working. They may have to continue with it for years before they notice any positive results.
Unfortunately, this can lead to patients feeling like they are being taken care of, but their doctor might not be knowing about it. It is also possible for patients to decide that they do not want to follow their doctor’s recommendations and start taking medications on their own.
Legal counsel
Until now, the term adverse event was generally used in medical literature and conversation to refer to any symptom or sign that something is wrong.
However, in recent years, the term adverse event has been increasingly used in popular discourse to refer to any negative symptom that occurs as a result of treatment.
For example, people who experience headaches are said to have an adverse event headache. Once they seek treatment, their doctor may determine that the headache is due to medication side effects, but not everyone agrees.
In medical discourse, when a patient receives a negative diagnosis from a doctor but another patient receives a positive diagnosis from another doctor, the second patient is said to have had an adverse event diagnosis.
This phenomenon occurs even when one of the doctors involved is not licensed by the government body that issued the positive diagnosis. It is called physician self-diagnosis.
Media coverage of the incident
The media’s coverage of the incident was also lacking. There were no articles, videos, or clips showing the reporters’ faces nor did they identify themselves as such.
The reporters were almost like shock spokespeople for Dr. Wu and his staff. They appeared on television news shows and gave interviews about the incident, but their lack of affiliation with Dr. Wu’s office made them look like he was “doctor shopping” or “over-touting” his practice in order to attract patients.
This perception was hard to shake, making it harder for people to trust the media as a source of information about health and medicine.
Leave a Reply