Medical treatment

Before explaining the present status of the medical treatments in Japan, see the cases which have happened actually as below.

• Performed an operation mistakenly on a heart disease patient for lung, conversely lung disease patient for heart operation in Kanagawa, January 1999.
• Let an examined kid go home in leaving a 7.6cm splittable chopstick accidentally stuck inside his brain. The kid died 2 days after the diagnosis in Tokyo,July 1999.
• Neglected to switch on a respirator in Shimane, January 2000.
• A hospital in Niigata unveiled the facts in 2000 that gauze had been left in the bodies of five patients after the operations in the past of more that 15 years and a 13-millimeter needle inside the patient who got a heart operation.
• Left a 26cm spatula inside a patient's body in Tokyo, January 2001.

Do you believe all of them? Of course these cases above are not all of what have been happening in recent years but only a part. There are at least more than two dozens of mistaken operations in the years between 1999 and 2001. Including the cases that have not yet come to light, the number would be higher. You would not feel like taking medical treatments in Japan to your surprise.

You could speculate on what are the causes for the mistaken medical treatment. It’s been unveiled that many of the unbelievable mistakes have happened in university-affiliated or relatively major public hospitals. Like the organizations of companies, these hospitals have the divisions of labor. As medical treatments are generally becoming more advanced with varieties of medicines and high-tech medical apparatus, hospitals cannot resist becoming systematic, especially controlled by computers. The last case as referred above, for example, a typical one in which the systematic mistake lead to the wrong treatment. In the case, The doctor thought that he clicked on an appropriate medicine on the computer screen in order to restrain the inflammation for the pneumonia patient. The medicine he chose was relaxant, which came up on the same computer screen next to the medicine he was supposed to choose. This medicine has nothing to do with the treatments for pneumonia. The patient had died 8 days after the injection of the wrong medicine. Despite the fact, the hospital denied the casual relation between the patient’s death and the wrongly chosen medicine.

There are some specific causes that came to light in the same case. First of all, the medicines with different effects are named similarly, which will confuse even doctors. Secondly, poisonous medicines come up on the same screen with ordinary ones. Thirdly, just before injecting the medicine into the patient, there is no check on the scene. Finally, this is important though, Japan has no rule to impose informed consent although there is necessity of the medical accountability as explaining the names or effects of medicines doctors use. There is a question on whether or not informed consent works when it comes to special medical treatment. In the process of carrying out informed consent, doctors would find such basic mistakes.

As the number of outstanding mistaken treatments is increasing, the figure of lawsuits for the medical mistakes is also on the rise. The uphill trend has been seen recently, however, there are some difficulties that plaintiffs actually win the trials. One of the difficulties, for example, is that plaintiffs can’t easily collect evidence. The apparent evidence such as medical records is not disclosed to the victimized patients because there is no obligation to open the documents. For Another it’s difficult to find third-party doctors in order to prove the fault of sued doctors. The medical world is so small that any doctors tend to support the colleagues.

As for medical treatments, although you know it’s tremendously important to look for reliable doctors or hospitals, it’s not a piece of cake because serious medical treatments are not so often. So what we patients do to prevent doctor-side mistakes is to gather as much information as possible about the medical treatment particularly from doctors such as the effect of medicines or so. And keeping notes is also important. This effort works not only in terms of giving pressure to doctors but just in cases of lawsuits.

.

The number of medical treatment-related lawsuits on a basis of acceptance

Supreme Court of Japan