Medical Malpractice

[Aaryanna]

[COLOR=SeaGreen]Medical Malpractice: Improper or negligent treatment of a patient, as by a physician, resulting in injury, damage, or loss.

I?ve heard of it, knew what it meant, but until recently I had never experienced it. Or in this case had to deal with it as it is my dog who was hurt by a negligent vet. You see my dog had really bad breath. Something I?ve been telling the vet for the last year and a half since what I?ve read about pets is that bad breath is an indication that they are sick or they need to have their teeth cleaned. Every single time the vet told me she wasn?t sick and that her teeth were fine.

Three months ago she went in for her yearly check up, she got her shots and when the vet did the exam I asked him again if she needed her teeth clean or if she was sick since the bad breath had not gotten any better. He gave me a little starter kit for brushing her teeth and again said she was fine. Now if you are wondering why I kept asking the vet if she was okay, well, most dogs don?t have breath that smells like sewage. Honestly! They do have dog breath, but when it becomes worse than what it use to be then it?s an indication that there is a problem.

Well a short while ago I did what the vet told me to and went to brush her teeth again as I?ve been brushing them a couple times a week like he told me. When I did one of her front teeth nearly broke off! I was sitting there thinking what the?? I called but the vets didn?t have an opening until Friday so I called to take her elsewhere. I found out that the vet who has been telling me she was okay lied! The bad breath was being caused by tarter under the gums damaging her teeth!

Something that if the vet had checked he would have caught! I?ve been so frustrated since I found out since I think the vet was ignoring my concerns and didn?t really check her teeth like they are suppose to. I kept telling him I thought something was wrong and he kept telling me she was okay. >_< Part of what has me so frustrated is if he had just looked three months ago and if they had cleaned her teeth she would have been just fine. She doesn?t have gum disease and once you have tarter under your gums, brushing won?t help; you have to get the teeth cleaned.

How hard would it have been for him to address my concerns by carefully checking her teeth? I think he ignored my concerns since I?m not a vet and he assumed I knew nothing. >_< So now my dog has lost five teeth, she was worked on a few days ago, and it was completely unnecessary.

I?m not looking for advise with this thread since I?m already going to lodge a complaint with the Utah Veterinary Board and if appropriate I?m suing the vet as well. What I?m curious about is if anyone else here has had similar problems whether it was with a pet or with your own doctor or someone you know. And if you have, I?d like to hear what happened since I?m sure I?m not the only one who has encountered this problem. [/COLOR]

[SunfallE]

[COLOR=RoyalBlue]I don?t know if it would be called malpractice, but I?ve certainly run into incompetent doctors. The one I remember most is one who had been treating my brother for problems with his knees. Every so often his knee would give and as a result it would swell up and he had to stay off of it for weeks. The doctor would just use a syringe and remove stuff from around the knee, put him on some meds for inflammation and send him home to be miserable for weeks.

The third time it happened the doctor had moved to a new office. Now this wouldn?t have been so bad, but if a patient needed to use the restroom they would make them walk to the other side of the building to use a public one. That wouldn?t have been a big deal either except the previous doctor in that office had been my physician so I knew for a fact that there was a restroom there and for what ever reason his office was making patients with knee and other joint injuries walk to the other end of the building when it wasn?t necessary.

It was thoughtless and in my opinion showed a complete disregard for the patients under his care. So my brother made an appointment with another doctor who unlike the one he was seeing was also into sports medicine and did a lot of work with the athletes on various sports teams where I live.

The first thing the new doctor did was x-ray my brother?s knee, something the other one never did and it turned out he had some sort of defect that needed surgery to correct it. So if the first doctor had just x-rayed his knee the first time, something I?ve since learned is standard for the type of problem my brother was having, well my brother wouldn?t have had to keep having the same problem. Now that he?s had surgery on both knees to fix the defect the problem has ended.
[/COLOR]