4 ms·

Yeah, we call the doctor's examination room a "surgery", and the place you get the actual surgery done is an "operating theatre". Divided by a common language a

Yeah, we call the doctor's examination room a "surgery", and the place you get the actual surgery done is an "operating theatre". Divided by a common language and all that... but obviously it comes from a time when your local doctor would have performed surgery (presumably with leeches) in his front room. But he ended up in surgery pretty quickly after we arrived at the hospital. It took them a day to analyse his X-rays and realise he was not responding to regular antibiotics, and the decision was made to transfer him to the larger hospital for the operation. As for the misdiagnosis made by our family doctor (G.P. or General Practitioner, we call them), I'm not qualified to comment on whether it was a reasonable error or not.

liveoneggs 9y ago
all doctors should be able to hear large amounts of fluid in the lungs and, furthermore, should be on the lookout for pneumonia when someone had flu and then got worse. Your doctors, in this case, performed terribly.
- 3chelon 9y ago
  I suspect you are correct. The fact that the second doctor I saw immediately sent him to hospital makes me think the first doctor was not doing her job properly. I guess that's why they say you should always get a second opinion.
  - monkmartinez 9y ago
    The second doctor shouldn't make you second guess your first doctor. The second doctor had the advantage of time. Pneumonia generally doesn't manifest in the span of hours.
- jasonmp85 9y ago
  Seconded. This is an insane story. You don't need a second opinion, you need a better doctor.
- monkmartinez 9y ago
  It's not like a liter of fluid is just dumped into the lungs immediately... couple that with Rhonchi or Rales due to (what I presume) bronchitis that WAS diagnosed. You can't treat everyone that is Flu-like symptoms as if they are going to die of pneumonia. Doesn't make sense.
  - liveoneggs 9y ago
    but people with neck pain + fever + general sickness after a flu? that could also have been meningitis!
msla 9y ago
> our family doctor (G.P. or General Practitioner, we call them) We have the same term and abbreviation in the US for the same people, but I never know how many people who didn't grow up around medical people know it. > As for the misdiagnosis made by our family doctor (G.P. or General Practitioner, we call them), I'm not qualified to comment on whether it was a reasonable error or not. Sometimes it is, and it still goes to court. I'm biased towards the US in my knowledge, but a doctor or nurse can be legitimately afraid of, essentially, the precise kind of case your son was the victim of: The extremely rare serious problem masquerading as a very common and not-very-serious problem. That road goes directly into malpractice lawsuit territory, and when you're on that road everyone goes a bit insane. Everyone in the medical field carries malpractice insurance because, as I've implied, some malpractice lawsuits are inevitable, due to a confluence of reasonable judgement and an unreasonably uncommon malady. Does this mean malpractice law needs to be reformed (read: done away with)? No, because some people out there practicing medicine are really incompetent, or lazy, or just go a bit weird and start cutting their initials onto livers like some deranged Zorro. We need some way to get those people out of the profession. I guess I'm not really leading anywhere with this. The fact innocent people will have to go to court over reasonable judgment which leads to a bad outcome because of blind chance is just magnifying the unfairness of the whole event, increasing it and spreading it around. Will it make the MD more likely to correctly diagnose next time? It might make them more likely to order a test that's probably not warranted statistically. That's not the same thing. Everyone's human, and humans are sometimes incompetent and malicious, so we need malpractice law, but humans sometimes make honest mistakes and always use limited evidence to reach conclusions which are sometimes wrong, so malpractice suits catch innocents and send them through a wringer.
- 3chelon 9y ago
  I agree with you. This is the main reason we did not go down the malpractice route. It is far less common here in the UK than it seems to be in the US, but still fairly common. But as you said, everyone goes a bit insane. As it turned out, our doctor probably dodged a bullet because of the sheer chance that I got a second opinion and the fact that the hospital system worked flawlessly thereafter. If, god forbid, our son had not recovered, it would have been a different story, there would have been anger to vent and likely a court case.

liveoneggs 9y ago

all doctors should be able to hear large amounts of fluid in the lungs and, furthermore, should be on the lookout for pneumonia when someone had flu and then got worse. Your doctors, in this case, performed terribly.

3chelon 9y ago
I suspect you are correct. The fact that the second doctor I saw immediately sent him to hospital makes me think the first doctor was not doing her job properly. I guess that's why they say you should always get a second opinion.
- monkmartinez 9y ago
  The second doctor shouldn't make you second guess your first doctor. The second doctor had the advantage of time. Pneumonia generally doesn't manifest in the span of hours.
jasonmp85 9y ago
Seconded. This is an insane story. You don't need a second opinion, you need a better doctor.
monkmartinez 9y ago
It's not like a liter of fluid is just dumped into the lungs immediately... couple that with Rhonchi or Rales due to (what I presume) bronchitis that WAS diagnosed. You can't treat everyone that is Flu-like symptoms as if they are going to die of pneumonia. Doesn't make sense.
- liveoneggs 9y ago
  but people with neck pain + fever + general sickness after a flu? that could also have been meningitis!

msla 9y ago

> our family doctor (G.P. or General Practitioner, we call them) We have the same term and abbreviation in the US for the same people, but I never know how many people who didn't grow up around medical people know it. > As for the misdiagnosis made by our family doctor (G.P. or General Practitioner, we call them), I'm not qualified to comment on whether it was a reasonable error or not. Sometimes it is, and it still goes to court. I'm biased towards the US in my knowledge, but a doctor or nurse can be legitimately afraid of, essentially, the precise kind of case your son was the victim of: The extremely rare serious problem masquerading as a very common and not-very-serious problem. That road goes directly into malpractice lawsuit territory, and when you're on that road everyone goes a bit insane. Everyone in the medical field carries malpractice insurance because, as I've implied, some malpractice lawsuits are inevitable, due to a confluence of reasonable judgement and an unreasonably uncommon malady. Does this mean malpractice law needs to be reformed (read: done away with)? No, because some people out there practicing medicine are really incompetent, or lazy, or just go a bit weird and start cutting their initials onto livers like some deranged Zorro. We need some way to get those people out of the profession. I guess I'm not really leading anywhere with this. The fact innocent people will have to go to court over reasonable judgment which leads to a bad outcome because of blind chance is just magnifying the unfairness of the whole event, increasing it and spreading it around. Will it make the MD more likely to correctly diagnose next time? It might make them more likely to order a test that's probably not warranted statistically. That's not the same thing. Everyone's human, and humans are sometimes incompetent and malicious, so we need malpractice law, but humans sometimes make honest mistakes and always use limited evidence to reach conclusions which are sometimes wrong, so malpractice suits catch innocents and send them through a wringer.

3chelon 9y ago
I agree with you. This is the main reason we did not go down the malpractice route. It is far less common here in the UK than it seems to be in the US, but still fairly common. But as you said, everyone goes a bit insane. As it turned out, our doctor probably dodged a bullet because of the sheer chance that I got a second opinion and the fact that the hospital system worked flawlessly thereafter. If, god forbid, our son had not recovered, it would have been a different story, there would have been anger to vent and likely a court case.