By Birgit Bürkner
Mistakes can happen wherever people work. Also in the healthcare system, where increasingly complicated treatment methods and more patients encounter staff shortages, stress and excessive demands. The possible consequence: bad medical mistakes!
There are standards, guidelines and safety checks for every medical intervention. And yet: the Berlin-Brandenburg Medical Service had to prepare 1,524 reports on suspected medical failure in 2022. In around a third he recognized treatment errors that resulted in damage!
Those affected suffer serious consequences. As the case of Marina Harder (36) from Pankow shows. At the beginning of January 2021, she gave birth to her daughter (2) by cesarean section in a Berlin hospital.
“She was born on January 10th and it wasn’t until the end of November that she sat on my stomach for the first time,” she says with tears. “I couldn’t look after my child for ten months.”
Doctors work with checklists to prevent errors. In the picture a cesarean section Photo: stock.adobe
Harder, under local anesthesia during the procedure, remembers how the operating doctor said: “It’s bleeding… can’t take any care now…, close it.”
After the cesarean section, her condition worsened, her kidneys failed, and she had to be transferred to the intensive care unit! After three days she was back in the normal ward: “My stomach was black, blood was constantly running from the wound. I was in a lot of pain.”
That was normal, she had had abdominal surgery, said nurses and doctors. Harder drew attention to their situation again and again. “I was either not listened to or taken seriously,” she says. After a week, she desperately asked to be released.
Her husband drove her home and called an ambulance, who took her to another clinic. “The ultrasound showed that the entire abdominal cavity was full of blood,” said Harder. “Nerves were damaged due to the great pressure.” It took her months to be mobile again.
Through her instinctive actions, Marina Harder probably averted something worse. On the occasion of World Patient Safety Day on September 17th, she wants to encourage other people: “Patients must not allow themselves to be fobbed off. They have to keep fighting until they get help!”