The Emotional Toll of Medical Malpractice

Dan Frith

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We all know the physical effects of medical negligence. It can mean the loss of the ability to walk or work. It can mean a lifetime of pain. It can mean death! One well-known study estimated that as many as 98,000 hospital deaths a year stem from mistakes by health care workers. A recently published article discusses how these act of medical negligence can affect our emotions.

The New England Journal of Medicine tackled the issue yesterday in a moving commentary called "Guilty, Afraid and Alone: Struggling with Medical Error.'' The writers, Dr. Tom Delbanco and Dr. Sigall K. Bell of the Harvard Medical School, note that while the medical community has focused largely on reducing error rates, hospitals also need to address the "human dimensions" of treatment blunders and to assist in the emotional recovery of patients and families.

The authors found that family members often feel guilty for not having protected loved ones from the caregivers' mistakes and that many feared retribution if they did complain. For example, the article noted cited the family of a man with sickle cell anemia who repeatedly warned health care workers not to administer morphine -somehow it happened anyway, sending the man into kidney failure and a coma.

For more information on this subject, please refer to the section on Medical Malpractice and Negligent Care.