I have been contacting my state legislature, AND THEY HAVE BEEN CONTACTING ME BACK! Everybody is concerned with runaway health care costs. In my state we have "tort reform." We also have a silly little "hearing" that everybody must go through where they tell you that you don't have a case. It is a waste of time and money. Physicians in my state are immune from prosecution no matter how many laws they break and no matter how substandard their care is. Most states are like that.
If you know ANYBODY, your cousins second cousins ex wife's step grandmother, ANYBODY who has been able to sue for medical malpractice please let me know. If this person actually won, that's even more unusual. I want to know the year and the problem. I believe that medical practitioners have successfully lobbied our legislators (they have scads of money to buy off people) and threatened them with being without medical care at all if they are not held in reverence and perfect holiness at all times. They are above reproach and impervious to lawsuits and now they get to have some fun. We need to stop them!
Here is one of the things I am talking about with my legislators; Number one on the list is the idea of patient self determination and "informed consent." Since Doctors and hospitals are playing fast and loose with "informed consent" here is an effective and reasonable way to get them to tell us the truth. If it can be proven through mediation that the informed consent laws were breached, either through deliberate omission, or by not having an "informed consent" at all, the patient has no liability for any charges arising from said treatment.
So, if you went to the hospital expecting to be "awake and alert" and find that they gave you Versed, omitted the amnesia, omitted the long term anxiety, omitted the unnatural obedience, failed to tell you that once you were sedated that you would no longer be able to stop the procedure, then you don't have to pay. It's very simple. Show the "informed consent" which details all of this and there's no problem.
You can see by my example that the REFORMED "informed consent" is a lot more detailed than the current one. This reflects the concerns of many of us that this drug in particular has had inadequete consent forms in regards to its use. This is not "something to relax you." Whether you remember it or not, you will be terrified, just unable to express it or do anything about it. You will feel pain, scream, beg for mercy and the procedure will continue.
Take it from somebody who retained memory, I was immobile, yes, but relaxed? Hardly. I was angry, upset, horrified, humiliated etc. but there wasn't a damn thing I could do but lie there like a corpse and take it. Unless they ordered me to do something, which I promptly did AGAINST MY OWN WILL! It was the most dehumanizing experience of my life. My CRNA claims I was "very relaxed" during all of this. Difference of persective.
So, "informed consent" must contain facts that a normal person would want to know, not just what the medical professionals choose to reveal. Simple, effective and watch the medical folks scream bloody murder. Just think of all the free colonoscopies and other minor procedures that we will get before the medical community "gets it!" Now that is small comfort if you have an idiosycratic reaction like so many of us have had, but it's a start.
Just think, if a law like this had been on the books, you may not have even gotten this drug and you wouldn't be here reading this now! I will have some thoughts on surgeons and the truth and about anesthesia providers and the truth in other posts.
No comments:
Post a Comment