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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/11 ... o_be_.html

Talk about not doing the right thing. I hope this woman gets every penny for a major misdiagnosis. Coming from experience, I lost my grandmother to a misdiagnosis and I wish my family had sued for that amount, or caused the doctor and nurses that were caring for her to lose their job for something like that. The woman on the plus side has a very good attitude and wants to get her life back on track as best as she can, and I hope she does.

I ahve a different opinion. It must be hard for Doctor's. Any number of symptons from the hundreds of patents they see can be extremely similar or indicate a number of things. Each time a Doctor sees somebody they can be making a life or death decision by essentially an educated best guest or even following what experience has taught them. Even a common disease or health problem can give different symptons in different people, give unusal symptons in a particular individual or show up symptons which can match several diseases on any given ocassion.

In this case the paitents symptoms were presumably giving an indication of kidney stones, something the doctor has likely diagonosed dozens or hundreds of times at least and it was randonly something far different from what I can guess of the story. The human body isn't some book which can be read, studied and translated into some clear category of function. I don't think Doctors should be sued for what is essentially the Science of best guesses in a stressful environment.

Medicine is vast and not one Doctor in the world these days could ever aquire knowledge of all diseases, infections and health problems. And even if they could then there is no clear cut or simple method of determining how a body is actually ill. I think it's unfair on them in a job that is impossible to perfect. It would be like sueing a person for not winning a lottery every week in a system where the range of lottery numbers are secretly altered.

Very good points. A doctor can only work with what they are given, so I see your point. I wonder too if the nurses involved with the patient's care had written a symptom down wrong (a possibility at best too). And I also see your point on the doctor's experience pertaining to the condition of a kidney stone, thus the normal pain killer given could have caused an adverse side effect (another possibility). And lastly it doesn't seem to state in the article if the patient had been given a monitoring (hopefully that is the right word) phase for her treatment either (I wonder if they do that for patients with pain killer prescriptions).

I would imagine the Doctor would have recomened a set procedure when he saw the paitent which would be the recomened method of deling with it. Doctors for all intents and purposes make very few decisions themselves, essentially they always follow the medical guidelines they are given, especially in everyday cases of ill health.

Unless the Doctor didn't follow medial guidelines (unlikely) or missed some very obviously different symptoms which pointed to something else then they shouldn't be blamed. Even if the symptons were similar to something else and there is only a subtile difference I'm not sure Doctors should be blamed considering how anything can look quite different on various skins types, colours or conditions.