Mysterious Pain or Telltale Sign? Should Doctors be Liable for Failing to Diagnose Illnesses?

What is the most important tool in communication? Speaking? Writing? The most important tool in communication is listening. When patients communicate with their doctors, this is what they should be focused on, listening. Doctors are taught in medical school to listen carefully to what complaints the patient has since the patient is in the best position to tell them what’s going on.

For three years, a woman in Maine told her doctor that she suffered from chronic pain in her back and hip.  Unbeknownst to her and her doctor, the pain in her bones was actually cancer spreading throughout her body.  Although the woman is now being treated with chemotherapy, irreparable damage was caused by the delay in diagnosing and treating her cancer.

This story is echoed by a case in South Carolina where a woman went to a hospital reporting that she had back and stomach pain.  The hospital diagnosed her with kidney stones and sent her away. Merely 48 hours after being discharged she died from sepsis, which is a system-wide infection throughout her body. 

In the fast paced world that we all live in today, it is no surprise to see a decrease in attentive care throughout the medical profession. Primary care physicians are people like the rest of us. Living in a fast paced society means that they can not afford as much face time with patients as they may want and their patients may need. The result is that patients, like the woman in Maine and the woman in South Carolina, may not be receiving medical care from a doctor that communicates effectively with them.

On the other side of the coin, doctors do not want to test patients for life threatening illnesses every time someone comes in with a cold. Also, patients do not want to go through time consuming, potentially embarrassing, and expensive tests that may end up being unnecessary.  The real issue in these cases and in healthcare across the country, is that doctors just need to listen more and stop making decisions on whether a patient’s health care insurance will or will not pay for certain tests. 

Although both sides of the issue have defensible positions, the jury in Maine awarded the woman with cancer one million dollars.  Similarly, the jury in South Carolina awarded three million dollars. These cases illustrate how important it is to have doctors that actually listen when patients discuss their symptoms.

Doctors should not feel obligated to inundate patients with unnecessary tests.  Instead, they should listen to what patients have to say. In situations where patients report an issue and it goes undiagnosed, the reason may not be that the issue is simply too much of a mystery to solve.  Rather, it might just be that no one is listening.

To learn more about how these cases work, I encourage you to explore my website http://www.oginski-law.com. If you have legal questions, and I urge you to pick up the phone and call me at 516-487-8207 or by e-mail at lawmed10@yahoo.com. I welcome your call.