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Maria Romero
English 28, Section 1254
Professor Batty
9 December 2016
Medical Malpractice and the Doctors of Today
Newly graduate doctors or those students aspiring to become doctors
should under go heavier, more scrupulous background checks to ensure a
safer environment in the medical field. Without having regards to this, there
will continue to be cases of medical malpractice through incompetence,
negligence, and a simple inability to rightfully gain informed consent.
To start, it seems that a vast majority of new doctors have forgotten
how to correctly gain consent from their patients. They do not want to
undergo the process of questioning from their patient, who has every right to
know what procedures will be done to his/her body. They only are made to
sign a slip granting a doctor permission to operate. However, patients are
not given any detail about their surgical procedure, leaving them without a
say in granting consent. For example, Skloot states that, "But first -- though
no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting samples or asked
whether she wanted to be a donor-- Wharton picked up a sharp knife and
shaved two dime-sized pieces of tissue from Henriettas cervix: one from her
tumor, and one from the healthy cervical tissue nearby. Then he placed the
samples in a glass dish" (Skloot 33). This demonstrates how history is
repeating itself on how doctors perform other operations on their patients

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beyond their scope of conduct. Though some doctors act with compassion for
their patients, there are some who disregard the life of their patient and take
advantage of the lack of consent to apply their supposed expertise and
experience, not realizing the consequences of their breached conduct.
When doctors fail to correctly obtain a form of consent from their
patient, that failure frequently tends to reveal itself after they breach their
conduct. And though sometimes their breach of conduct results in serious
complications, they can also, in the worst-case scenario, result to be fatal.
What is more shocking is that in rare instances, when a doctor performs a
miraculously successful surgical procedure, they somehow develop a god
complex, and think that they can perform another operation without fail,
which ironically leads to disastrous and even tragic results. Particularly,
Salisbury points out in this article, "Rifai cleaned the wound area without
anesthesia and repeatedly prescribed ointment and pain medication. He did
not refer Pagan to a wound care specialist, as she requested multiple times"
(Salisbury 19). This shows that although Pagan did not pass away, she was
left completely scarred after her operation, both physically from her resulting
stomach wound, and mentally. When a doctor disregards a patients serious
signs and symptoms of pain and discomfort of a possible life-threatening
condition as something of a minor illness, it definitely shows the
incompetence of their skill. This happened to be the case with Pagans
doctor. By lacking the judgment to clean and sanitize her operated area, Dr.
Rifai allowed for her stomach wound to become severely infected. And yet,

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like most doctors of today do, he denies any responsibility and rather blames
his patient. Salisbury asserts, "It was (Pagans) choice to have this surgery
and she was well aware of the potential complications, (Salisbury 24).
The act of professional negligence is often considered to be the most
important factor in determining whether a patient suffered from medical
malpractice. It is one level of misconduct when a doctor lacks the judgment
of his actions, but it becomes a whole new level of seriousness when a
doctor acknowledges that he and his surgeon colleagues committed a
mistake and carry on with the surgical procedure, or they do not realize at all
their apparent breach of conduct until they try to conceal consent forms
pretending as if nothing ever happened. For instance, Dempsey states that,
"Both doctors should have looked at the images of the Jan. 24, 2008,
echocardiogram themselves and ordered a new one, and Olsen should have
been admitted to a hospital sooner," (Dempsey 14). This shows that doctors
today do not understand the severity of committing negligent actions. They
do not realize that being careless does not always result in sudden
repercussions that they cannot easily hide away from. In the case of Mr.
Olsen, Dr. Owlias negligence did not immediately affect Mr. Olsen, but it did
not mean it was a good result, since early in beginning of the following year,
Owlias carelessness drastically impacted Olsens life. Not only did his health
hit the critical low point, he unfortunately passed away as it was already too
late when Dr. Owlia and Dr. Bryant realized the preventive error they had
done. I can closely relate to Mr. Olsens wife, who grievingly sued the two

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doctors in this case, because I also lost my mother to a case of medical
malpractice through negligence. It was a horrible period in my life as I
witnessed exactly how my mother went from beautiful and healthy to
horridly distraught and malnourished with the tubes that ran all through her
body. Before my mother was hurried into the ICU, she was perfectly fine and
scheduled to check out of the hospital without any further complications.
However, that all changed when after the procedure, the doctor who
performed the surgery on my mother was too careless enough to let a novice
trainee to remove the chest clamps, recklessly yanking the clamps away. She
immediately fell into discomfort and had felt as if something completely
worse had just happened to her body, but they disregarded it as nothing
critical. It turned out to be devastatingly worse, and despite all the supposed
care and attention that they had on her during her time in the frightening
ICU, she unfortunately did not make it.
To conclude, it is very evident that the number of young, ambitious
students aspiring to become doctors in the medical field is gradually growing
today. A close correlation to this is a growing number of serious incidents and
deaths involving issues with medical malpractice. This is becoming a serious
problem as few of these medical malpractice cases ever do get mentioned or
become a controversial topic in the media. And though most of these
inspired students may strive to achieve becoming a well-respected doctor,
the truth is that many have forgotten how critical this profession really is and
only find making great income most important. This is why when newly

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graduate doctors or those aspiring to become doctors apply or are
recommended to work in hospitals, they should go through more thorough
background checks to guarantee a safer environment in the medical field.
There will continue to be more severe cases of medical malpractice through
incompetence, negligence, and a simple inability to obtain informed consent
if we decide to absolutely do nothing about this. It is time that we return our
faith in our doctors without having to be concerned about risking our life, as
well as it is time that doctors demonstrate once again that they are highly
competent professionals who have zero tolerance for negligence.

Works Cited
Dempsey, Christine. Jury Awards $3 Million In Medical Malpractice Case.
Hartford Courant. June 26. 2015. Web. December 9, 2016.
<<http://www.courant.com/community/litchfield/hc-hartford-wrongful-deathverdict-0627-20150626-story.html>>
Salisbury, Danielle. Jury awards Jackson women $1.3 million in medical
malpractice case. February 24, 2016. Web. December 9, 2016.
<http://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/index.ssf/2014/02/Jury_awards_Jackson
_women_13_m.html>>

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Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Crown Publishing
Group, February 2, 2010. Print. December 9, 2016.