Research archive

Medical issues

A record of medical errors and their consequences

Errors killing patients: report
5 May 1997
The Age, Melbourne
Victorian hospitals errors and complications kill or are associated with the deaths of more than 1700 patients a year, a new study released today shows. The study, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, estimates that nearly 63,000 or 5 per cent of Victorian hospital patients have an “adverse event” - an unintended injury or complication - a year. A quality-assurance expert, Dr Ross Wilson, who headed a controversial study in 1995 estimating that hospital injuries and complications kill 18000 Australians a year and injure 16.6 per cent of patients, and who analysed the Victorian study, has criticised Australian health ministers for failing to act to improve patient safety.
Edited version

Mystery cut in vein killed woman, inquest told
22 May 1997
The Advertiser, Adelaide
A woman died after a vein inadvertently was cut during a new surgical technique - but the surgeon was unable to say how the cut was made, an inquest heard yesterday. The inquest, before the State Coroner, Mr Wayne Chivell, is continuing.
Edited version

Surgery left man brain damaged, court told
23 May 1997
The Age
A St Albans man was in a vegetative state after negligent neurosurgery and appalling post-operative care at St Vincent’s Hospital, a Supreme Court jury was told yesterday. Mr Arthur Adams, QC, said the outcome of treatment on Mr Leonardo Mendez, 55, in 1986 for an aneurism was a medical disaster.
Edited version

Heart victim died after hospital death
28 May 1997
The Advertiser, Adelaide
Truck driver Stephen James Keane had been doing a bit of lifting at work, when he began to experience pains across his chest and arms. Professor John Horowitz, a visiting cardiologist from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, recommended Mr Keane undergo an exercise test, commonly known as a “stress test” before his discharge from hospital. The test involved Mr Keane walking on a treadmill... Mr Keane’s chest became tight and the test was ceased, his heart stopped beating and although he was resuscitated once, his heart had suffered a rupture and he died. State Coroner Mr Chivell said “there is a substantial body of medical opinion which suggests that the risks associated with such practice are not justified by the benefit to be derived thereby.”
Edited version

Doctor told to seek training
28 May 1997
The Advertiser, Adelaide
The state coroner, Mr Wayne Chivell, has criticised a Port Augusta doctor and recommended he seek training in emergency medicine after a man died as a result of his “inadequate” treatment. In his recommendations, Mr Chivell said he believed Dr Yeung should undertake further training in emergency medicine, looking in particular at the investigation of complaints, the adequacy of record keeping and the adequacy of information provided to other staff when patients are referred to them. He also recommended the hospital better co-ordinate the actions of doctors, district nurses and other employees, particularly in the transfer of information about patients.
Edited version

Coroner told caesarian might have saved baby
3 June 1997
The Age, Melbourne
A baby might have lived if Dandenong Hospital staff performed an emergency caesarian when tests first revealed a deterioration in the condition of the foetus, a gynaecologist told the Coroner’s Court yesterday.
Edited version

Breast cancer victim sues GP
3 June 1997
The Australian
A mother of four with only weeks to live is suing her local doctor for negligence alleging she failed to diagnose breast cancer and botched an operation to remove the lump using unsterillised instruments in a suburban surgery.
Edited version

Doctor, nurse linked to death
17 June 1997
The Age, Melbourne
By failing to detect signs of foetal distress, a doctor and a midwife at Dandenong and District Hospital contributed to a baby’s stillbirth, the deputy state coroner, Mr Iain West, found yesterday. “Dr Aranka Zallmann’s failure to detect evidence of foetal distress at that time and to notify Dr Orchard falls below the standard expected of a resident medical officer covering a labour ward and amounts to contribution to the cause of death,” Mr West said.
Edited version

Hospital blamed in man’s death
19 June 1997
The Age, Melbourne
Administrative errors by nursing staff at Beleura Hospital contributed to the death of a 74-year-old-man who died from toxicity to a drug, a coroner found yesterday. The coroner, Ms Jacinta Heffey, said “The Beleura Hiospital through its failure to to provide a system to minimise the risks associated with non-communication to consultants of potentially important information must attract criticism. I find that Beleura Hospital and its nursing staff contributed to the death of the deceased.”
Edited version

Brain-damaged man sues GP who vaccinated him
20 June 1997
Sydney Morning Herald
A brain-damaged man is suing his doctor for medical negligence, claiming that a childhood vaccination left him severely retarded from infancy. Mr David Bonello, 18, is believed to be the first person to launch such a case in the Supreme Court.
Edited version

Doctor criticised over invalid pensioner’s death
4 July 1997
The Advertiser, Adelaide
Eleven days after a doctor recommended support health services be withdrawn from a 70-year old invalid pensioner Leila Hart, she died. Yesterday the doctor who made the order, Dr John Biggins, was severely criticised by the Coroner, Mr Wayne Chivell, after an inquest into the death.
Edited version

Mum’s death surgical error
9 July 1997
The Advertiser, Adelaide
“Surgical error” caused the death of a mother of four during a first-time operation at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital two years ago, a coroners inquest has found. But Coroner Wayne Chivell, in handing down his findings yesterday, refused to make any recommendations. Instead, he said, medical staff involved in the operation “should re-examine their respective roles.”
Edited version

GP used patients to gain pethidine
9 July 1997
The Age, Melbourne
A general practitioner was yesterday struck off the medical register after a Medical Practitioner’s Board panel found that he used his patients and his position as a doctor to obtain pethidine for his own use.
Edited version

Doctors refuse to give evidence at inquest
19 August 1997
The Australian
Three Melbourne doctors refused to give evidence for fear of self-incrimination yesterday at a coronial inquest into the death of an elderly woman who had allegedly been dismissed as an “old hypochondriac”. But the Alfred Hospital told State Coroner Graeme Johnstone that it has altered its patient management system after the death of Janina Prus-Butwilowicz, 77. It had also expressed “sincere regret” to the woman’s family. Her son... told the court he was in London on July 28, 1995, when he received a frantic telephone call from his mother who said she was “in agonising pain” and that she was “dying”. She told him he had been taken to the Alfred Hosiptal where she had spent most of the day “laying for along time in pain’. He said his mother had told him a young doctor had insisted on sending her home. “When I told him I was dying and in terrible pain he was laughing at me and said I needed a social worker, not a doctor,” Mr Prus-Butwilowicz quoted his mother as saying.
Edited version

Girl loses fallopian tube in hospital bungle
25 August 1997
The Australian
Hong Kong’s hospitals, already under attack over a range of fatal mistakes, came under fresh fire yesterday after it was revealed a surgeon removed the fallopian tube of a young woman in the belief it was her appendix.
Edited version

Australian reevaluates National Health Priorities
4 September 1997
Reuters
Australia leads other industrialized countries in the declining number of melanoma cases, but has a long way to go in significantly reducing other preventable diseases, according to a new report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the Commonwealth Department of Health and Family Services.
Cardiovascular disease, preventable injuries, and diabetes are a major cost burden on the Australian health system, according to principal author, Dr. Kuldeep Bhatia, head of the Population Health Unit of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
In 1994, 43.3% of all deaths in Australia were caused by cardiovascular diseases. Coronary heart disease and stroke accounted for 24.1% and 10.1% of all deaths, respectively. These rates were much higher among disadvantaged groups, especially indigenous Australians.
“Between 1986 and 1994, the age-standardized death rates for all cancers...remained stable, but generally, incidence rates...increased,” the report says. Prostate cancer (18.1%) and lung cancer (15.4%) were the leading causes of all deaths among men, while breast cancer remained the major cause of death among women (26.2% of all deaths). The report notes that significant reductions have been achieved in the prevalence of melanoma, colorectal and cervical cancers. Lung cancer incidence has also declined among men.
Injuries accounted for 5.7% of all deaths--most of them preventable, according to the report. There has been little change in injury rates in a number of areas, including road accidents and homicides.
Australian public health officials are primarily concerned at this time about the rise in suicides among men aged 15-34 years--one of the highest rates among industrialized countries. Poisoning is said to be the fourth leading cause of death in Australia.
In 1990, 3.8% of the population was said to have some form of diabetes. This figure is expected to rise significantly by the year 2000. More than 85% of adults with diabetes have noninsulin-dependent diabetes, due to sedentary lifestyles and obesity. The incidence of gestational diabetes is also up, particularly among non-English speaking immigrant groups.
At the end of last year, the government included mental health as one of its main priorities, partly as a result of the alarming rise in the numbers of youth suicides and depression. The 1989-90 National Health Survey estimated that some 3.5% of the population have one or more mental disorders, including those induced by alcohol and drug abuse, which cost the healthcare system more than $2 billion.
Dr. Bhatia told Reuters Health that, while individual segments of the report may cause concern, the overall picture it represents is not bad in terms of population health. All the indicators examined are moving in the right direction, he says, but added that “...you are dealing with human behavior, and human behaviors are not easily turned around.”
This “First Report on National Health Priority Areas” is the fifth in a series of biennial reports examining the country’s health status. It is the first of its kind to establish specific benchmarks against which future progress in these health areas can be measured, Dr. Bhatia told Reuters Health.

“Suicide - they’ll find a way - they’ll find a time....” Coroner
28 October 1997
Kylie Skipper, The Mercury, Tasmania
The Royal Hobart Hospital has been warned to be wary of discharging suicidal patients after yesterday’s coronial inquiry into the death of a Battery Point woman.
Hobart coroner Ian Matterson found Claire Jayne Tyler, 33, of Battery Point, killed herself with a cocktail of alcohol and drugs on February 14 this year.
Closing the inquest, Mr Matterson said he was sure this case, and an almost identical case last year involving a man who committed suicide after his release from hospital, would prompt a warning to hospital staff about dealing with suicidal patients.
But he did not find the hospital at fault.
“If a person really wants to suicide they’ll find a way, they’ll find a time,” he said.

Quamby suicide: doctor stands by refusal to admit
12 November 1997
The Canberra Times
A Canberra Hospital doctor who refused a 17-year-old boy entry to the psychiatric unit less than 24 hours before the boy hanged himself at the Quamby Youth Centre said yesterday that he had made the right decision. Dr David Westcombe told the ACT Coroner’s Court he regretted using the term ‘manipulative’ but would stick with his assessment that the boy did not need inpatient psychiatric care. He also spoke of his personal stress caused by media attention.
Edited version

Anaesthetic a factor in at least 116 surgery deaths
18 February 1998
Sydney Morning Herald
At least 116 Australians died as a result of anaesthesia-related problems between 1991 and 1993, and most of the complications were potentially preventable. But the real number of such deaths may be higher, according to senior anaesthetists pushing for a uniform, compulsory national reporting system. The Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists released a report yesterday on anaesthetic-related mortality for Australia in 1991-93. It estimated there was at least one anaesthetic-related death for every 68,000 people who were put under. The most common problems were incorrect anaesthetic agent, unsatisfactory anaesthetic technique, inadequate pre-operative assessment, overdose of anaesthetic drugs and inadequate crisis management during surgery.
Edited version

Record payout to come at a premium
5 June 1998
The Australian
A record medical damages payout of $7.58 million, awarded to a young man brain-damaged as a baby, was upheld on appeal yesterday, prompting tears from his mother and a warning from medical insurers. For 20 years, Marija Lipovac, 59, and her husband, Joe, 60, have not had a holiday or a meal in a restaurant because of the 24-hour care needed by their son, Tom, since the mistake by his local general practitioner. “Tom is kind and beautiful. He just doesn’t understand that life is so difficult,” said Mrs Lipovac, whose son has the intellectual capacity of a three-year-old. The ACT Court of Appeal yesterday dismissed an appeal by United Medical Protection, the insurers of the doctor found to be at fault, against the award made to Tom, 21, by Justice Terence Higgins in the ACT Supreme Court last year. The court had heard how Tom Lipovac was a healthy 14-month-old baby when he was taken to his Canberra GP, Peter Black, with a bronchial problem and a history of asthma in 1977. Dr Black prescribed an aminophylline suppository. Half an hour after the suppository had been inserted, Tom suffered a seizure and brain damage. There was abundant evidence Tom’s seizure was caused by aminophylline poisoning, the appeal court found.
Edited version

GPs confess: our mistakes can kill
20 June 1998
Melissa Sweet, medical writer, Sydney Morning Herald
General practitioners admit their patients are suffering and even dying because of preventable mistakes, a groundbreaking study reveals. It suggests poor communication between doctors and patients and a lack of co-ordination between GPs and other health services - especially hospitals - are often to blame. The study, by the University of Sydney’s Department of General Practice, is based on reports made by 324 GPs of 805 potentially harmful events. These included their own mistakes as well as problems outside their control.
They reported 38 deaths, while expecting 7 per cent of the events to result in future deaths. Seventeen per cent of the cases were thought to have had “major immediate consequences” for patients. The most common potentially harmful event involved pharmaceuticals, such as patients taking inappropriate drugs or mistakes in prescribing, dosage or administration. The authors say drug-related complications could be prevented through more legible writing on prescriptions, and double-checking of doses and potential drug interactions.
Edited version

Medical Studies mostly rubbish
24 July 1998
Andy Whyman, The Medical Observer
The editor of one of Britain’s leading medical journals has castigated the quality of scientific papers he and his colleagues receive, saying only 5% of published articles reached minimum standards of scientific soundness and clinical relevance. Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal and a professor of medical journalism, told a conference that the studies reported in the 20,000 medical journals around the world were not of sufficient calibre nor sufficiently wide in their scope to serve as the foundation stone of evidence-based medicine. Only 5% of scientific papers came up to scratch, according to Professor Smith.
Edited version

Hospital death inquiry
12 October 1998
The Advertiser, Adelaide
A man who died after elective surgery at the Daw Park Repatriation Hospital may have been given the wrong blood, management has conceded. It has also been revealed his family have not been told of the incident or that an investigation is under way into the circumstances of his death.
Edited version

ACT hospital accidents cause hundreds of deaths: Greens
28 December 1998
The Canberra Times
More than 300 people could be dying each year in ACT public hospitals because of preventable ‘adverse events’, a former federal official who headed a five-year national health-care investigation has said. Canberra lawyer Fiona Tito is running for election to the Legislative Assembly as the ACT Greens candidate for Brindabella. She said last night that if the national results in her 1996 report on compensation and professional indemnity in health care were applied to the ACT, more than 300 people could be dying unnecessarily each year and 240 could be left with a permanent disability. ‘Adverse events’ included hospital-acquired infections, drug errors and wrong procedures.
Edited version

Medical mistakes killing 10,000 patients a year
1 March 1999
The Daily Telegraph, New South Wales
Medical mistakes result in the deaths of about 10,000 Australians a year, a report shows.
The patients die or are injured as a result of what hospitals call “adverse events”, the Australian Patient Foundation found.
The study, headed by the director of anaesthesia and intensive care at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, Professor Bill Runciman, found that as well as the human cost, the medical mistakes cost the community about $1.2 billion a tear.
The study, the first of its kind in Australia, is reported in the Journal of Quality in Clinical Practice.
The study was based on reviews of 14,179 confidential medical records.
Among the problems, including some which led to deaths, were:
• Unnecessary operations, such as mistaken diagnosis of gallstones, appendicitis and other conditions, which cost $29 million a year.
• Unnecessary investigations such as liver biopsies, use of cardiac catheters and bowel examinations.
• Reset of fractures after poor initial treatment and inappropriate placement of screws and plates on broken bones.
• Improper use of the prescribed anticoagulant drug Warfarin to prevent blood clots costing about $100 million a year.
• Stomach bleeds as a result of poorly monitored use of anti-inflammatory drugs for conditions such as arthritis.
• Pressure injuries, skin tears and ulcers as a result of poor patient care.
Professor Runciman said the study confirmed there were “system failures” in the ever-increasing complexity of modern medicine.
“It is time for there to be a system-based approach to fixing up these problems,” he said.

Man dies after busy doctor’s wrong diagnosis
May 21 1999
The Advertiser, Adelaide
A locum doctor took about three hours to respond to an ill epileptic man, then made a misdiagnosis during an examination that took less than 10 minutes, the coroner had found. The locum doctor was on about his 25th call-out of the night. Mr Leslie Dean Bettens, of Woodville South, died on August 8 1997, less than six hours after he was examined. An autopsy found he was suffering from a hernia and bowel obstruction which had caused his vomiting. Neither was diagnosed.

Specialist who injected 22 patients with caustic dye may face criminal charges
11 June 1999
Judith Whelan, health writer, Sydney Morning Herald
A Sydney specialist is facing possible criminal charges after injecting 22 patients with dye containing caustic. Two of the patients, who were injected over a five-month period at Canterbury Hospital, have since died. Four of the other 20 are seriously ill in hospital. The doctor, who practices in the inner west, has withdrawn himself from practice at the hospital, but was still seeing patients in his rooms yesterday. His staff said he was not available to comment.

Why boy died at hospital
11 August 1999
Daily Telegraph
A boy who died after being admitted to a small district hospital with suspected gastroenteritis could have lived if “good medical practice” had been followed, an expert witness told an inquest yesterday.
Dr Jane Antony, head of the department of neurology at Sydney Children’s Hospital, told the inquest into the death of Curtis Whitting, 3, that “alarm bells” should have sounded among staff at Manly District Hospital before he suffered a fatal cerebral oedema, or swelling of the brain. She said that if proper treatment had taken place up to an hour before Curtis suffered the oedema, his life may have been saved.

Doctors face big payouts
10 October 1999
Sonia Milohanic, health writer, The Sunday Telegraph, Sydney
Seventy-five doctors are under investigation for “inappropriate practice” and may have to repay thousands of dollars to Medicare. And in the past year, more than 600 GPs and specialists have been counselled by the Health Insurance Commission to change their practices. They are accused of over-servicing, including seeing too many patients in a day, over-prescribing drugs or over-using diagnostic tests. Over-servicing costs Medicare millions of dollars a year. Another GP tried to claim Medicare payments for reading tarot cards to a patient. “Patients are at risk. They’re not being examined properly.” In one case where a patient presented with rectal bleeding, it was 14 months before anybody examined him properly. “It was then found he had cancer.”
Edited version

Anaesthesia link in 135 deaths
10 October 1999
Brad Crouch, The Sunday Mail, Adelaide
Mistakes with drugs, faulty techniques and inexperience contributed to 135 deaths blamed on anaesthesia over a three year period. The vast majority of the deaths were preventable with about half blames on the technique used by the anesthetists. Anaesthetic drug overdoses were the cause of 45 deaths, while 18 patients died after being given the wrong drug. Twelve died from due to inadequate monitoring, 19 deaths were blamed on inexperience or inadequate supervision and equipment failure caused three deaths.
Edited version

Medical errors kill tens of thousands annually, panel says
30 November 1999
CNN online
More people die each year in the United States from medical errors than from highway accidents, breast cancer or AIDS, a federal advisory panel reported Monday.
The report from the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine cited studies showing between 44,000 and 98,000 people die each year because of mistakes by medical professionals.
“That’s probably an underestimate for two reasons,” noted Dr. Donald Berwick of the Institute of Medicine.
“One is, there are many different kinds of errors we never learn about --even in retrospective studies -- because they are never written down. And second, these studies did not include other areas of care like home care, nursing homes and ambulatory care centers,” Berwick said.
The groundbreaking report urged Congress to create a National Center for Patient Safety within the Department of Health and Human Services to set goals for avoiding medical mistakes, track progress in meeting them and to fund research on better ways to prevent such errors.
It suggested as a minimum goal a 50 percent reduction in medical errors within five years.
The American Medical Association said that while any error that harms a patient is one error too many, “overwhelmingly the system of medicine in the United States is safe .. when you consider the millions of doctor/patient interactions each day.”
Most errors involve medication.
The institute said medication errors are among the most widespread --everything from the stocking of full-strength drugs in hospitals that may be toxic if not diluted, to improper administering of medicines that results from illegible writing in a patient’s medical record.
In addition, the report said, “when a patient is treated by several practitioners, they often do not have complete information about the medicines prescribed or the patient’s illnesses.”
The institute said tens of thousands of people die in hospitals alone each year as the result of medical errors. It cited one study that put the number of such deaths at 44,000 annuallyand another that more than doubled that figure.

Errors lift hospitals’ death toll
8 December 1999
Mike Steketee, National affairs editor, The Australian
Mistakes in Australian hospitals are killing or injuring patients at up to three times the rate in the US, but four years of delay mean safety measures still have to be implemented.
Federal Health Minister Michael Wooldridge said it was “probably right” that half the errors could be prevented, but insisted the problem had to be tackled by the states and territories, which ran public hospitals.
A study commissioned by the federal Health Department from experts at Harvard University found that so-called adverse events, mostly due to human error, were associated with 3.2 per cent of hospital admissions in two US states, compared with 10.6 per cent in Australian public and private hospitals.
The events include medical and surgical misadventure, abnormal reactions to procedures, complications and adverse reactions to drugs.
The new findings come as a blow to critics, including doctors, who pointed to the US experience to challenge a 1995 Australian study that estimated mistakes caused or contributed to 18,000 patient deaths a year and 50,000 cases of permanent disability. The 1995 study found adverse events occurred in16.6 per cent of hospital admissions.
The study (is) due to be published in full in an academic journal soon.
Edited version

Toddler dies in drugs bungle
22 July 2000
The Advertiser, Adelaide
An 18-month old girl has died after being given the wrong dose of drugs at a Perth Hospital. The toddler was taken to the emergency department of the Joondalup Health Campus on Sunday night after apparently suffering convulsions, but her condition deteriorated after she was given an incorrect dose of drugs. Several staff have been made to take leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
Edited version

Woman dies after “farcical” hospital discharge
22 July 2000
The Advertiser, Adelaide
After the birth of the first of three children, Michelle Drechsler waged a constant battle with her weight. In 1997 she consulted doctors and underwent a stomach stapling operation at Whyalla Hospital (South Australia) on October 27 the same year....on April 27, 1998 she suffered a “blackout” and was admitted to Whyalla Hospital. Mrs Drechsler, 27 was discharged the following day but died hours later in her husband’s arms. In an inquest finding handed down yesterday, State Coroner Wayne Chivell described the manner of her discharge as “highly unsatisfactory, indeed, almost farcical”. Mr Chivell found the doctor had taken “an inappropriate and, indeed, unprofessional approach towards referring a patient with a serious condition to the consultant.”
Edited version

Probe: Nursing Mistakes Cause Deaths
9 September 2000
Poorly trained or overwhelmed nurses are responsible for thousands of deaths and injuries each year in the nation’s hospitals, according to a Chicago Tribune investigation. Since 1995, at least 1,720 hospital patients have died and 9,548 others have been injured because of mistakes made by registered nurses across the country, the Tribune found in an analysis of 3 million state and federal records. The analysis is published in the Tribune’s Sunday editions.

Man sues over crippling illness
6 August 2000
Michelle Hele, Courier Mail, Queensland
A Redland Bay man is suing two Brisbane hospitals which failed to diagnose a rare illness that left him permanently wheelchair bound. Ronald Smit, 43, is seeking $900,000 from the Brisbane South Health Authority, which is responsible for the QEII and Redland hospitals where he sought treatment from August, 5,1992. In his opening address Tony Morris, QC, “They treated his condition extremely off-handed. They regarded him as something of a burden, criticising him as having a low pain threshold, a whinger and a complainer, someone with psychological problems,” he said. He said a doctor at the Redland Hospital told him, “it seems to be getting better, go home”.

Inquiry into QEH death
2 November 2000
The Advertiser, Adelaide
State Coroner Wayne Chivell will investigate the death of a western suburbs grandmother who died in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital after she was initially sent home with painkillers.

Psychiatrist guilty of misconduct
2 November 2000
Courier Mail, Queensland
A senior psychiatrist has been found guilty of professional misconduct after telling the mother of a mentally ill teenager that her son was worthless. Dr Alistair Barron of the Royal Brisbane Hospital’s adolescent mental health unit was notified last month of the Medical Board of Queensland’s findings of “misconduct in a professional respect” in his dealings with the 14-year-old boy and his mother Deborah Pagura-Inglis in May 1999. The board found that Dr Barron had been “inappropriately hostile” towards Mrs Pagura-Inglis and had disclosed information relating to her personal circumstances to non-relevant parties.

Medical errors must be diminished
8 November 2000
The Australian
Recent research has exposed a rate of medical error that is much higher than can be reasonably accepted. About 18,000 Australians die each year because of medical errors. A further 5,000 are permanently disabled. Federal Health Minister Michael Woolridge in the past has conceded that as many as 50 per cent of these errors could have been prevented. It is a global problem: in Britain, about 40,000 patients die from medical errors: a US report last year found 98,000 Americans die each year from medical mistakes, and the story is similar in Canada and New Zealand.

Doctor jailed for death of baby Carmen
16 November 2000
Mark Oberhardt, The Courier Mail, Brisbane
A Brisbane doctor who injected a toddler with a huge overdose of morphine will serve six months in jail for the child’s manslaughter. Margaret Joy Pearce, 58, last night was found guilty of the unlawful killing of 15-month-old Carmen Currie on June 21 last year. She was sentenced to five years in prison, the term to be suspended after six months. Russell Hanson QC, for Pearce, said his client had acknowledged she had made a mistake. “Doctors do make mistakes, lawyers make mistakes, clerks make mistakes, engineers make mistakes - does that make them criminals?” he asked.

Woman given wrong pills
24 November 2000
The Australian
A woman won almost $40,000 in damages yesterday from a doctor who mistakenly gave her hormone replacement tablets instead of contraceptive pills. The 25 year-old woman, who cannot be named, had an abortion after falling pregnant in May 1996.

Sent home three times - then he died
30 November 2000
The Advertiser, Adelaide
The fiancée of a man who died last month after being sent home three times by the Royal Adelaide Hospital is now seeking legal advice over his death. Reehan Ward, 37, died alone on his kitchen floor of an acute infection stemming from appendicitis. He had been to the hospital that day with a letter from his GP asking that he be admitted but was again sent home. The office of the Coroner Wayne Chivell has not made a decision on whether to hold an inquest into Mr Ward’s death.

Nurse’s deadly blunder
30 November 2000
The Mercury, Tasmania
A nurse contributed to the death of an elderly woman by mistakenly increasing the epidural medication to 20 times the required dose, an inquest found yesterday. Calvary Hospital was not found to contribute to the death but its work environment and practices were criticised by the coroner as less than satisfactory.

Epidemiology of medical error
7 December 2000
Ms Stevens (Elizabeth), Hansard, South Australia
An article in the March 2000 edition of the British Medical Journal reports that in 1995 a study of the medical records of 14,179 admissions to 28 hospitals in New South Wales and South Australia found that an adverse event occurred in 16.6 per cent of admissions, resulting in permanent disability in 15.7 per cent of patients and deaths in 4.9 per cent and that 51 per cent of adverse events were preventable. In 1998, it was reported that the number of claims for malpractice had increased to over 600 in one year, compared with 27 claims in 1990.
For a full copy of the British Medical Journal report, click here.

Kids doctor struck off
16 December 2000
Brett Debritz, The Sunday Mail, Brisbane
Parents have been warned to be vigilant about their children’s medical treatment, after a Queensland doctor was struck off for incompetence in treating young patients. The Health Practitioners Tribunal barred Jean McFarlane, a 70-year-old GP with clinics in Beenleigh and Brisbane’s Chermside, from practising medicine. A former Queensland Health director of maternal and child health services, she was found guilty of professional misconduct and mistreatment of 23 patients, most of them children, since March 1996. The case highlighted a patient’s right to question a doctor’s treatment. In 1997, Dr McFarlane lost an appeal against a charge of unacceptable professional conduct, when it was alleged that she ordered pathology services costing Medicare $552,754 in 1994 - “more than almost all other medical practitioners in Australia”.

Unwashed doctors’ hands spread disease
30 December 2000
The Daily Telegraph, Sydney
An estimated 9000 preventable deaths still occur in Australian hospitals and doctors are spreading deadly infections like golden staph by failing to wash their hands between patients.
That’s more than three years after the introduction of programs to tackle the problem identified five years ago.

Teen sues over operation
10 January 2001
Mark Steene, The Advertiser, Adelaide
The State Government faces a large damages payout after a teenage boy entered hospital for a routine operation on his neck and left there a quadriplegic, dependent on a ventilator. Jason remains confined to an electric wheelchair, and his parents’ home at North Haven has been modified to accommodate him.The Women’s and Children’s Hospital accepted liability for Jason’s injuries in November, 1997, and the Supreme Court has already awarded Jason and his parents, Peter and Sharon Dobbie, $370,000 for his care. “As a result of the defendant hospital failing to provide adequate post-operative care to the plaintiff, the plaintiff became an incomplete tetraplegic (quadriplegic) and ventilator dependent,” the papers say.

Doctors guilty in breast clinic scandal
11 January 2001
Beezy Marsh, London
Two doctors were found guilty yesterday of Britain’s biggest breast cancer screening scandal. Blunders by John Brennan and Graham Urquhart led to 82 cancer victims being wrongly given the all-clear. Eleven of them died. One expert told the General Medical Council there had been “a unique catalogue of screening assessment failures the like of which I have never come across”. Brennan was said to have failed patients through sheer laziness.

Amputation error fatal
18 January 2001
The Advertiser, Adelaide
A Swiss court has launched an investigation into the death of a man, 80, after an operation at a Lugano hospital firing which a surgeon amputated the wrong leg. The surgeon went to the local police station after he realised he had cut off his patient’s healthy leg by mistake.

Blunder in brain surgery
1 March 2001
Courier Mail, Brisbane
New York: Six doctors have been suspended after surgeons operated on the wrong side of a man’s skull. Construction worker Kevin Walsh, 41 was taken to Brooklyn’s Long island College Hospital where tests identified a blood clot on the right side of his brain. But surgeons opened up the left side of his head. When the mistake was discovered, they quickly replaced the piece of skull and scalp. The patient..was only told of the mistake when a newspaper uncovered the blunder.
Edited version

Flesh eating disease left untreated
21 March 2001
The Advertiser, Adelaide
A potentially fatal flesh eating disease was untreated by doctors at the Modbury Public Hospital for three days the Supreme Court was told yesterday. Mr Sicolo is suing the Modbury Hospital and his doctor...for medical negligence over their alleged failure to diagnose and treat the disease which nearly cost him his left leg.
Edited version

Too little done for ill woman, court told
21 March 2001
The Advertiser, Adelaide
Surgeons should “have taken the bull by the horns” in treating a woman desperately ill from infections to her surgical wounds the Coroners Court was told yesterday. Ms Roach was admitted to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital on April 8 1998 to remove a growth from her colon. She underwent four operations including two colonscopies in six weeks. She died from multiple organ failure on May 22 1998 just two days after the final operation to clean her colon area which had become severely infected.
Edited version

Spotlight turned on medical mistakes
1 August 2001
Sydney Morning Herald
Hospital mistakes and medical deaths will be subject to unprecendented scrutiny under a dramatic upgrading of health safety measures. Australia’s health ministers are expected to embrace today the first national report on patient safety, which estimates that healthcare mistakes seriously harms or kills 2 per cent of patients.

Anaesthetist acquitted of killing patient
2 August 2001
The Daily Telegraph, Sydney
An anaesthetist was yesterday acquitted of the manslaughter of an elderley cancer patient. The Crown alleged Dr Reineres, 37, ignored warning signs that Mrs Bryne had no pulse of blood pressure following a “straightforward” bowel operation.

Blood bungle led to death
2 August 2001
The Daily Telegraph, Sydney
The family of a man who died after being given the wrong blood during a medical procedure yesterday described the bungle as “unbelievable” “The first thing we knew about it was when the doctor said to us, ‘we’ve had an accident, we’ve given him the wrong blood.’

Doctor suspended for lifting weights
13 August 2001
The Advertiser, Adelaide
A Broken Hill anaesthetist has admiited he left patients on the operating table in the middle of major surgery to go and lift weights in a room next door. Dr Leonard Ware, who earns $217,00 a year, has been suspended on full pay from the Broken Hill Base Hospital pending a full investigation by the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission.
Edited version

Hospitals’ bungles leave patient with sorry tale
20 August 2001
Sydney Morning Herald
Maria Petrovic first felt a sharp pain in her side one afternoon in March. When it became so severe she could hardly stand, she went to a doctor at Kingsgrove who suspected appendicitis and sent her to St George Hospital. But it was another 31 hours before she was operated on for what turned out to be the life-threatening condition peritonitis. That delay has left her angry and upset, and threatening legal action against the St George and Gosford hospitals. It has also left the administrators at the two hospitals embarrassed and defensive over the treatment she received before eventually having to go to a private hospital for surgery. “What she had was potentially fatal,” said Dr Caska, who has complained about her treatment to the management of Gosford and St George hospitals. On arrival, Ms Petrovic was operated on within hours by Dr Paul Caska, who found the burst appendix had caused peritonitis.
The executive director of St George, Mr David Pearce, apologised for Ms Petrovic’s distress and said staff involved had been given the opportunity to “reflect on the effectiveness of their care”. He added: “Incidents of significant misdiagnosis such as in this case are uncommon.” At Gosford, the chief executive, Mr Jon Blackwell, acknowledged Ms Petrovic was inadequately assessed with “poor documentation and poor service delivery”.

Sex doctor struck off register
3 December 2001
The Advertiser, Adelaide
A psychiatrist who admitted massaging a patient but denied having sex with her at his Australian clinic has been struck off the British medical register for professional misconduct.

Doctors pay for botched surgery
6 December 2001
Darrell Giles, News.com.au, Los Angeles
A patient spent weeks in agony after surgeons left a 35cm implement inside his stomach. Donald Church, 49, of Seattle, was in extreme pain for two months while carrying around the malleable retractor. The instrument - identical to a metal ruler - even set off an airport detection system, but guards could not find a weapon on Mr Church. The error proved costly for Seattle’s University of Washington Medical Centre, which paid $200,000 compensation. “We’re talking about top surgeons at a major hospital doing this…this is somebody’s life.” The two surgeons who initially operated on the man declined to comment but a UW Medical Centre spokesman put it down to an “unfortunate mistake”. “We accept full responsibility,” said spokesman L.G. Blanchard. “We are deeply sorry that this gentleman had this experience while entrusting his health care to us. The medical centre is determined to learn as much from this as possible.”

Lobbyists point finger at nation’s errant hospitals
19 February 2002
Tom Nobile, health writer, The Age, Melbourne
Hospitals have reacted cautiously to a report that names five Victorian hospitals among Australia’s worst eight for medical errors. The report, by the Sydney-based Medical Error Action Group, is compiled from errors reported to the group by patients, patients’ families and medical staff. The group’s report named the top eight hospitals as: Royal Hobart, the Alfred, Canberra Hospital, Mater Public (Brisbane), Monash Medical Centre, Box Hill, Royal Melbourne and Frankston.

Doctor accused of force at baby’s birth
9 April 2002
Marshall Wilson, The Courier Mail, Queensland
A Cabarita mother is suing a doctor for more than $500,000 in damages for using too much force during the December 1992 forceps delivery birth of her second child. Gaye Catherine Breen is suing Dr Paul Kelsall Larkin, whose delivery at the Allamanda Private Hospital on the Gold Coast is alleged to have caused baby Sharnee to stop breathing. The Supreme Court in Brisbane was told that Dr Larkin’s heavy-handed treatment left Sharnee with severe disabilities, including a 40 per cent decreased lung capacity and without feeding reflexes. As a result she will require ongoing medical treatment for life. The court heard that a nurse who witnessed the delivery thought the doctor was going to pull the baby’s head off.

Surgeons ‘ignored student’s warning over fatal error’
13 June 2002
Telegraph.co.uk, London
Two surgeons whose patient died after they took out the wrong kidney ignored a medical student who pointed out their mistake as they operated, a court heard yesterday. As a result they removed the one healthy kidney of Graham Reeves, 70, a veteran of the Korean war, instead of the diseased organ, leaving the patient without a chance of survival. Leighton Davies QC, prosecuting the surgeons for manslaughter, said: “The negligence was so bad that it fell so far below the standard of care expected from a reasonably competent surgeon. It deserves to be condemned as gross negligence and therefore a crime.”

Psychiatrist struck off for sexually abusing patients
11 July 2002
Sydney Morning Herald
An Australian psychiatrist has been struck off the British medical register after getting a patient pregnant. Dr Lawrence John McCafferty, 54, has already been removed from the Tasmanian register over the allegations. Britain’s General Medical Council began investigating him when he began practising in England. McCafferty, of 43 Faraday St, West Hobart, was guilty of “appalling conduct” and a disgraceful abuse of trust, the GMC’s professional conduct tribunal said today. McCafferty was practising in Hobart when he was accused of having sex with Miss A, a vulnerable 23-year-old, over a six-year period and of unzipping another patient’s shorts and making sexual advances.

Medicine deaths top road toll
30 August 2002
Nick Papps, Herald Sun, Victoria
Medication mistakes are kept on a national register kept by the Australian Patient Safety Foundation. Foundation president Bill Runciman said that up to 5000 Australians die every year from medication errors. “It’s at least 2000 a year. That’s probably on the conservative side,” he said. Last year 1750 Australians died in car crashes.

$5.5m for a life ruined by Tassie doctors
27 September 2002
Catherine Anderson, The Mercury, Tasmania
Once she was a bright, sporty, intelligent woman, with a loving husband and two children. Today - because of the ineptitude of several Tasmanian doctors - she lives alone in a miserable little Melbourne flat with serious mental and physical disabilities. And the tragic life of Louise Crockett has left the State Government with a bill of about $5.5 million the biggest personal injury payout in state history. Ms Crockett was 33 when her life went horribly wrong in 1983.She was suffering post-natal depression after the birth of her second child and underwent brain surgery to relieve it. A post-operative infection was not detected in time and left her severely disabled.

Hospital admits liability
5 November 2002
Kathyrn Shine, The Australian
Royal Perth Hospital has admitted liability in a $5 million lawsuit brought by a young woman who suffered a massive brain haemorrhage after hospital staff gave her pain killers and sent her home.

Couple to sue over failure to diagnose meningococcal disease
24 June 2003
ABC News Online
A couple from Wagga Wagga in south-western New South Wales has been granted permission to sue a hospital and one of its doctors for failing to diagnose meningococcal disease in their daughter. Grace Willis had to have both her arms and legs amputated.

Court upholds ruling on sterilisation bungle
17 July 2003
ABC News Online
The High Court has upheld a Brisbane couple’s claim for the costs of raising a child born after a failed sterilisation procedure. Three years ago, Craig and Kerry Melchior successfully sued the doctor involved and the Queensland Government, which ran the hospital where the procedure was performed.

Surgeon critical of hospital on errors
13 August 2003
Tom Noble, health writer, The Age
Children are being exposed to medical mistakes and unnecessary operations because of a culture at the Royal Children’s Hospital that fails to deal adequately with medical errors, a leading surgeon said yesterday. Professor Paddy Dewan said children had died due to medical mistakes at the hospital, but when something went wrong, the events were not openly and freely discussed.

Perth doctor jailed for four years for lying to a Medical Board of Inquiry over his sexual relations with a patient has been deregistered
23 February 2004
ABC News Online
Rex Alexander Hood was found guilty in the District Court last month on three counts of perjury. He denied having a sexual relationship with a patient who gave birth to two of his children, claiming he had artificially inseminated the woman with his brother’s sperm. The Medical Board removed Hood’s name from the list of registered medical practitioners, saying he was no longer fit to practice.

Woman takes legal action after scissors found in abdomen
20 April 2004
ABC News Online
A Sydney woman is taking legal action after a pair of scissors were left in her abdomen after an operation. Pat Skinner has told the ABC’s 7.30 Report she was given a clean bill of health after having part of her colon removed at St George hospital. But for 18 months after the operation Mrs Skinner complained of severe abdominal pain. An X-ray revealed a 17 centimetre pair of surgical scissors left behind in the 69-year-old’s abdomen. St George Hospital has admitted a breach of the duty of care and her surgeon has apologised. Mrs Skinner and her husband Don say they were appalled when the scissors were found. “I just can’t believe that, you know,” she said. “I had those things inside me for such a long time. I just think it’s obscene. That’s the only way I can describe it.”To see such a thing inside of a person and where they are it’s just terrible.”

Widow wins hospital negligence case
28 April 2004
ABC News Online
A New South Wales woman has been awarded almost $700,000 in damages after a jury found a north coast hospital was negligent in failing to treat her husband shortly before he committed suicide. In June 1999 Nick Da Pos was taken to Port Macquarie Hospital after complaining to a doctor that he was hearing voices. However, he left three hours later without being treated by a doctor. A Supreme Court jury has found the hospital breached its duty of care and contributed to the death of Mr Da Pos. His wife, Karen Da Pos, and her two children have been awarded $691,000 to cover loss of benefit, personal injury and loss.

Doctor under investigation over golden staph infections
26 May 2004
ABC News Online
A doctor banned from practising by the medical board is being investigated by the Western Australian Health Department after six of his patients contracted the same infection. The department says the patients, aged between 35 and 80, contracted golden staph after being treated with needles by the doctor. Golden staph is a potentially fatal disease caused by bacteria and can be spread by touching infected surfaces or via skin contact. Head of communicable disease control, Shirley Bowen, says no new patients have been infected, because the doctor is no longer allowed to practice - due to an another incident. Dr Bowen says the doctor’s procedures are being examined. “A preliminary audit suggests that normal standard infection control procedures in regard to needles in particular have been followed,” she said. The Australian Medical Association (AMA) says it is alarmed by the way the disease has been transmitted. President Brent Donovan says the AMA will continue to monitor the cases.”Anything where there can be people admitted to hospitals because of infections from needle-sticks put into patients is a cause for concern,” he said.

Court hears hospital error left baby with brain damage
21 June 2004
ABC News Online
A Melbourne court has been told a baby suffered permanent and severe brain damage after he was given the wrong intravenous drip solution at the Royal Children’s Hospital. One-month-old Nathan Liu was admitted to the Royal Children’s Hospital for severe vomiting in September 2001. It is alleged the baby was given 10 times the recommended dextrose rehydration solution, causing severe brain damage. His parents are suing Women and Children’s Health for pain and suffering, economic loss and future care. Their lawyer has told the Supreme Court the boy cannot walk or use his arms, cannot eat properly, has severe vision impairment and significant sleep disturbance. He told the court the boy’s parents were traumatised when the overdose occurred and the father had to reject a highly paid position at a United States university because of the care the boy would need.

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