A case of bad documentation?

rbromme

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A man who was hurt in a car crash but was misidentified as a cancer patient claims security guards at Prince George's Hospital beat him up when he tried to leave the hospital to avoid chest surgery he didn't need - "to have a potentially cancerous mass removed from his chest." He adds that one guard repeatedly called him ":censored::censored::censored::censored::censored:" as he roughed him up.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/08/25/29858.htm
 

Aidey

Community Leader Emeritus
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So at any point did the guy say "hey, this bracelet is wrong"? It sounds like he didn't say anything and just decided to walk out without any warning.

I also can see why they would want him to return the bracelet, since it has someone elses name and info on it.
 

angels.girl84

Forum Crew Member
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what the heck.... Why didn't he just have them check his Id band? odd story when I was in the hospital for surgery they would ask me my name before they checked the bracelet
 

Aprz

The New Beach Medic
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This story sounds whacked.
 

reaper

Working Bum
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We do not know the whole story. But, if that is anywhere near being correct, that hospital is going to lose their behinds.
 

jjesusfreak01

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Doesn't matter if he told them that the bracelet was wrong. He decided that he could not trust the hospital and that he wanted to leave. Seeing as he wasn't under a psychiatric hold, they had absolutely no right to do anything but ask him to sign a release, which of course he isn't obligated to do either.

I mean, what if he hadn't woken up? Are they going to start prepping him for surgery, maybe place him under anesthesia before they realize what went wrong? Seeing as according to the complaint, the first thing he told the nurse is that they had obviously mixed him up with someone else, and she apparently wasn't smart enough to simply apologize and offer to fix it, but rather ordered security to hold him in the hospital when he wanted to leave.

Read the story, read the complaint. Its not just two security guards (and for the record, he makes it clear that one of the guards was apparently not happy with what the other was doing), but also their boss, a nurse, her boss, and possibly another hospital administrator that all should be arrested for unlawful imprisonment and have their royal behinds sued into oblivion.

If the nurse had never called for security in the first place, this never would have happened. Although they obviously overstepped their bounds, I have to look at this from the viewpoint of the security guards too. They were called to a scene by a nurse who asked them to restrain a patient. In this case, do they even know any better than to just do what the nurse asks. They might think he's a psych patient, they might think he's a criminal, they don't know. To top it off, the administrators offered him pain meds...any pain meds he wanted. I think the feds ought to step in here and shut down this whole hospital. Bad at every link in the chain there.

Unless he literally just made up this whole thing, I don't think I can see the hospitals side. He wanted to leave, you let him leave, end of story. The second you hold him in the hospital everyone involved was committing a felony.
 
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Too Old To Work

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If the facts of this story are correct, Wheeler has a hell of a law suit. Actually, if the facts are correct, there should be criminal charges filed against several of the hospital employees.

As I often tell family members, patients have the right to refuse any and all medical care provided they are not deemed to be incompetent. That is more of a legal determination than a medical one. Absent inability to consent or refuse treatment in a life threatening injury or illness, there is no legal justification to hold someone against their will.
 
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