A recent article in Parade Magazine listed ways you can avoid being one of the 98,000 Americans a year that die due to medical mistakes. Many more die as expected complications of drugs and surgery provided according to accepted guidelines. Some of the measures you can take are making sure your doctor is actively trying to prevent blood clots from lying in bed, being sure your surgical site is marked on the correct side, asking nurses and doctors to wash their hands and stethoscopes prior to examining you in the hospital, and asking the IV lines and catheters be removed as soon as possible. Better yet, if you use integrative medicine, which includes office-based IV’s of vitamins and minerals, you might be able to avoid going to the hospital in the first place.
See Parade magazine, February 8, 2009, page 12-13(click here)
1 comment:
You really do have to pay attention when you are in the hospital. Just last month when I was a patient in a very prestigious medical center in Columbus, an IV line was placed in my arm. On 3 separate occasions with 3 different nurses I had to remind them to take an alcohol prep and swab the medication port before injecting my meds!
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