Dr, Oz and Dennis Quaid with Medical Mistakes - Show Recap

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Medical Mistakes:

Killing more people than breast cancer, AIDS and car accidents combined, medical mistakes are a major issue in the health industry. With 100,000 people dying each year from errors in their health care, Dr. Oz joined Oprah to educate viewers on how to help prevent these accidents of care from happening to them.

Actor Dennis Quaid joined Dr. Oz and Oprah on stage to share his story of medical mistakes regarding his newborn twins. Dennis and his wife Kimberly had just had twins - a boy and girl - who seemed fine at birth, but had to return to the hospital to be put on antibiotics. To ensure the medication would enter the body without having a blood clot stop it, the twins were given Heparin - a blood thinner. The twins seemed fine so Dennis and his wife returned home; but things weren't fine. It wasn't until the next morning that the couple learned their children had received 2 overdosed of the blood thinner.

Dennis and his wife were shocked to learn their children had been given 1000 times the dose of Heparin they were meant to receive, causing their blood to become the consistency of water and their body to bruise and bleed out of any previous opening from shots, etc. Other babies have died from the same mistake, and the Quaid twins could have had the same fate. While the twins were in the hospital for 2 weeks, the first 40 hours were the most crucial and Dennis was happy to say his children are healthy toddlers today.

Putting their trust in the hospital and doctors, the Quaid's felt that they would be taken care of properly; never expecting the worst to happen to their newborns. To help prevent this from happening to other families, Dennis spoke before Congress to help make the necessary changes in the hospital to hopefully save many lives. Dennis shared his feeling that all hospitals need to move to the technology of computerized records and barcode systems to monitor patients and treatments. Dr. Oz agreed that the current system of pen and paper is way behind and needs to be updated to modern times.

Dennis returned to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in LA where he met with Linda Burnes-Bolton who is in charge of the nursing staff. Linda expressed how the night with the Quaid newborns was a wake-up call for the staff and they have been working on ways to make changes and have less errors. Cedars has now moved to the barcode system which detects when an improper dose or medication is given to a patient.

On the show, Dr. Oz demonstrated how hospitals are moving to the system similar to that in a grocery store. After scanning the doctor, patient and medication, the scanner gives a red or green light indicating acceptance.

Here are the steps Dr. Oz recommends for you to help prevent medical mistakes happening to you:

• Avoid infection: insist on hand-washing, keep hand sanitizer by your bedside, no flowers, remove jewelry, clean stethoscope and TV remote, bow ties are ideal (doctors wearing regular ties may be carrying germs).
• Mark your body: write which side to operate on and also write on the side not to operate on.
• Know when to avoid chit-chat.
• Find a hospital that's high-tech.
• Ask if the hospital follows a checklist protocol.
• Make sure hospital is accredited.
• Make friends with your "hospitalist" or full-time hospital physician

Unable to find a tumor with mammograms, ultrasound and MRI, doctors felt they had to perform a mastectomy to remove the cancerous cells. Eight days after the surgery Molly was asked to come back to speak with her doctor. In tears, Molly's doctor informed her that her slide had been switched with another patient and she never had breast cancer. Thinking she was getting a death sentence, Molly was partially relieved, but then confused on where to go next. Molly proceeded with treating the cancer in her neck and has been cancer-free for 4 years.

Molly's story teaches that patients who are given a very rare diagnosis should question their doctor and seek a second opinion instead of just trusting completely in their care. Molly wanted viewers to know that patients have the right to their slides and extra tissue taken to request additional testing or to take the slides elsewhere to be viewed. Molly felt that the law/system got in the way of patient-doctor interaction and she never got the apology she wanted from the doctors who made the mistake.

Chef Grant Achatz is known in the culinary world as the next great chef. While he was spending up to 20 hours a day perfecting his craft in his Chicago restaurant, he was also experiencing pain without getting answers. Finding a white spot on his tongue, Grant first ignored the spot, then asked his dentist and later his general practitioner about the spot and was told it was nothing. When the pain got to be unbearable and he could only consume liquids, Grant finally sought the opinion of an oral surgeon who told him he had stage 4 cancer and would have to have his tongue removed.

Because of his profession and passion for cooking, Grant refused to have surgery until he could find a doctor that was willing to find alternative methods, be more humane, use contemporary medicine and preserve his organ. On his 5th center, Grant finally found a doctor at the University of Chicago willing to use chemotherapy and radiation to treat his cancer. After 18 months of treatment and recovery, Grant is now cancer-free. Grant stated that his best advice is to be your own advocate. The spot on his tongue could have been easily diagnosed with a simple test, but he was misdiagnosed for 3 years before getting the blow of stage 4 cancer. Dr. Oz encouraged viewers to learn from the guests and start the smart patient movement - not just for yourselves, but for those patients who are behind you.