Posted on 05/29/2007 8:26:34 PM PDT by dangerdoc
A woman's formal complaint – filed with the city of Denver – alleges she was hurt and humiliated by instructions from an emergency room doctor that she should not get drunk and hurt herself.
The complaint stemmed from an incident that developed when a 34-year-old mother of two, Karin Howe of Littleton, was riding in a rickshaw in Denver's trendy Lower Downtown district, and stood up and fell back onto a sidewalk, where she hit her head and was knocked out, according to a report by CBS Channel 4 television.
She had been partying with friends, and appeared to have been drinking just before the accident. Documents obtained by the television station showed her blood alcohol level measured 0.216 percent after the accident, and that Howe was uncooperative with emergency response personnel and was tied down.
A BAC of .216, for a person who weighs 140 pounds, is about five martini’s consumed over a two hour period.
Good advice. Ya’ learned a cheap lesson, honey.
If she was humiliated she did it to herself. What an idiot !!!!!
GDFD is offended over helpful advice, hmmmmmmmmm.
But according to Howe’s complaint, she was not seen by a doctor until 7:50 a.m., more than five hours after she arrived. She was eventually examined by Sooch, but Howe says the doctor did not order X-rays, an MRI or a CT scan of her head, nor was she admitted to the hospital. Sooch treated the cut on her head and in his discharge instructions, prescribed Tylenol, facts verified by medical records. Dr. Sooch, on the hospital discharge sheet, had these instructions for Howe:
“Do not abuse alcohol. Do not get drunk and fall causing harm to your head or body. Apologize to your family, friends and ED (emergency department) faculty for your extremely inappropriate behavior and rudeness while intoxicated. Be a great mother to your kids.”
Under standards of medical practice long established in this country it is *never* inappropriate for a physician to advise a patient who has fallen out of a moving vehicle and was subsequently found to have a blood alcohol level about 3 times the level of legal intoxication to refrain from drinking to excess so that he/she might avoid a repeat of a potentially fatal scenario.
Basically what she wanted was $10000+ in useless tests, what she got instead was good advice.
I'd sue! /sarc
She did sue and they settled.
This is the natural result of a society that has progressively shifted from a paradigm of personal responsibility to a paradigm of victimology.
Agreed. I can’t tell you how much money the ER wastes ordering tests that aren’t needed. But they have to do it so they cover their butts!
After reading the story it appears that she might have gotten what could be considered substandard health care.I come to this suspicion thanks to the skull fracture that the original hospital missed as well as her having been held (for observation,I assume) at another hospital a day or two later.
The original hospital settled,I'll wager,to keep the story out of the papers and I'll bet they didn't settle for much.
As for the discharge instructions...having worked in an ER for many,many years I can say that while they were,perhaps,a bit overboard they didn't violate any part of a code of ethics or standard of practice and the only jury that would have awarded her $$$ for the instructions themselves would have been an OJ-type jury....i.e,limited collective IQ.
ER physicians (the smart ones,at least) practice defensive medicine more vigorously than any other specialty.
Unfortunately, she does have a legitamate complaint. It is standard of care in my area to scan “drunk with head bonk.” Not defensive medicine or CYA, simply SOC. I’m sure she got a nice check.
Unfortunately, stupid sometimes pays and I’m certain she did not learn a lesson. In my experience the learning-from-bad-experience neuron is turned off when drunk.
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