Throughout life people in Georgia will get sick and injured. Sometimes the illnesses or injuries are minor and can be remedied at home or just simply take time to heal. However, other injuries and illnesses require medical attention. This generally requires people to go to a clinic or hospital. The expectation is that the doctors and other medical professionals will be able to figure out what is wrong, determine what needs to be done to help people get better.

However, this does not always occur and sometimes doctors and other medical professionals make mistakes. Some of these mistakes may be understandable, but there are some mistakes that should never happen in a hospital. These types of mistakes are referred to as “never events” and as the name says, should never occur.

Types of “Never Events”

These are thankfully not the most common types of medical mistakes, but they do still occur at high rates given that they should never occur. Each year more than 4,000 never events occur in the US and 71% of them result in fatalities.

Some of the more common types of never events that occur are: leaving a foreign object in the patient after surgery, operating on the wrong body part or the wrong patient, performing the wrong surgery on the patient, delays in treatment, a fall, burns, drowning, choking and other unanticipated events.

These are very dangerous mistakes that should never occur to patients in Georgia. When they do people can suffer catastrophic complications that take a long time to recover from or cause permanent problems. They are also very costly as well. The victims may be able to receive compensation for these injuries through a medical malpractice claim though. This compensation can be very valuable as people recover and consulting with an experienced attorney could be beneficial.

Cook & Tolley, LLP
304 E Washington St
Athens, GA 30601
(706) 549-6111
https://www.cooktolley.com/