Medical professionals must perform their duties with reasonable medical care, especially in the operating room, where risks are higher than usual. However, mistakes can happen during surgeries, too. Even the simplest thing in the operating room can distract a surgeon and result in them making a surgical mistake.
A setting full of interruption
Sometimes, medical practitioners reach a certain level of comfort when in the operating room that they start to perform acts during ongoing surgery that could disturb the operating doctor. These disturbances include, but are not limited to, the following situations:
- Side conversations among attending medical practitioners
- Inattentive operating room personnel
- People walking in and out of the operating room
- Malfunctioning equipment or incomplete tools
- Periodic alarm of several machines
Though having these circumstances present during an operation does not always result in surgical errors, it increases the chances.
Surgeons under stress
Distractions that can result in surgical errors do not always come from the operating room itself. If a surgeon is experiencing stress during an operation, even if the environment is free of other distractions, they can make a mistake. The stress could be due to personal reasons such as sudden negative thoughts or fatigue.
The purpose of identifying these distractions in lawsuits
In medical malpractice cases due to surgical errors, it is crucial for victims and their families to identify the existing circumstances during the operation that could establish the attending medical practitioner’s negligence.
This is a challenging task, especially when victims were likely asleep and their families were not in the operating room during the incident. Nonetheless, working with a surgical malpractice professional can help victims find the evidence they are looking for to solidify the lawsuit.
