Tag: Difficult to Distinguish

When British neurosurgeon Henry March sat at his patient's bedside after surgery, he knew the bad news he was about to deliver was his fault. The man had a pinched nerve in his arm that required surgery, but after making a midline incision in his neck, Marsh punctured the nerve on the wrong side of his spine. Preventable medical errors often involve surgery on the wrong side, for example, an injection in the wrong eye or a biopsy from the wrong breast. These “never events” (medical terms for serious and largely preventable...