Comparing The Medical Case Of Donald Church Vs. University Of Washington Medical Center

There are times in the medical field that patients become victims of their doctors or surgeons. Some of them might be on purpose, like abuse, others can be honest mistakes, like misreading a dosage. In the medical case I chose it was an honest mistake. The medical case I chose is Donald Church vs. the University of Washington Medical Center. In this case the patient, Donald Church, had had a thirteen inch retractor left in his abdomen, which is better known as the stomach area, after surgery. Some people may not know what a retractor is, but it is a surgical tool commonly used to hold back other organs and tissue so the field is clear to work. This case would be known as medical negligence,which is when a professional fails to provide proper

A week after seeing the surgeons he had set off multiple metal detectors in a variety of places. He was constantly being pulled to the side at airports and checked over for anything metal, but they could never find anything. After a while he went to see his family doctor who performed a routine exam on him and found an oddly shaped lump on Donald Church’s abdomen. This had scared Church and made him think the cancerous tumor was coming back putting him into distress. His physician then had ordered a full body x-ray and of the lump to figure out what was wrong with

They had figured out that the steel rod was a thirteen inch retractor that was left behind from his first surgery to remove the tumor. Two months after he had his first surgery, he was admitted to another hospital to have the retractor surgically removed. He had learned that one of the doctors dropped the retractor inside during surgery without noticing. Once the surgery was over they stitched him up with the surgical tool still inside him. Church had made it through his second surgery and was alright. There were no long term health effects of mister Church.

The surgeons and hospital has since admitted, to the liability and apologized for the incident and the pain that had occurred to Donald Church. However though this was not the first time an accident like this occurred in the hospital. There were four other cases from the year nineteen ninety seven to the year two thousand. The hospital had paid him about one hundred thousand dollars in an out of court settlement. Mister Church says that if he has to undergo another operation he wants them to videotape it in case of other mistakes. Donald Church was also able to keep the retractor that had once been inside