In today's episode of Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers, the Head of Neinstein's Medical Malpractice, Duncan Embury, discusses medical errors with Global News. Listen to the podcast or watch the video podcast on Vimeo.

Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyer's, head of Medical Malpractice, Duncan Embury discusses medical errors with Global News

Read Neinstein's Transcript of the Podcast below.

How much should we actually worry about medical errors? We're going to dig deeper into the issue. Bring in, Duncan Embury. He's a medical malpractice lawyer. Thanks for joining us. Give me a quick list here of what we're talking about in terms of errors.

Errors can be everything from medication errors to the wrong diagnosis to early discharge, surgeries that go wrong. There's the list goes on.

And we talked about better communication handoff, as they call it. Technically, you agree that's the issue — more times than not.

I would say that is the key issue that would prevent most medical errors.

Which sounds like a no brainer but is also evidence at the same time everybody's strained in the medical system, including the medical staff. It's probably contributing to it.

Right. I think that's the biggest contributor. I think as technology advances, and people get busier, the ability to actually sit down and communicate a person, a person gets less.

If anything, what's frustrating is, it seems to me this is preventable. It's just if it's used common sense which when you're under stress, of course, you're strained as medical professionals. We know that's an issue. Nevermind the patients that we talked about earlier in their families. It's not that simple. So, is the government doing enough?

Is it the government, or is it healthcare practitioners themselves? I mean, I think we have a strain on our system in terms of the patient population that healthcare practitioners have to see. It cuts down their ability to communicate directly.

So, I mean, you know this, you're a lawyer practicing medical malpractice law in Ontario, you know, the inside scoop. How do we fix it?

That's a hard question. I think it's a situation that needs fixing. I think patients can play a part in this too. In terms of communicating better with their own healthcare practitioners, it is all about communication, after all. And the more we ask questions, the more it facilitates answers.

I'm a big proponent of empowered patients, having family members who've gone through it, and you can't rely on the medical professional who has a list this long. You know, I mean, a to-do list and they're all for all these patients to ask questions, but where do you know not, you don't want to cross that line?

Well, I think. A lot of people are so scared of crossing the line. They never asked the questions, and I think healthcare practitioners will tell someone where they've crossed the line, but they need to ask the questions in order to get the answers first.

As I always like to say, better safe than sorry. More so, in this case.

Yes.

I appreciate your insight and time tonight. My pleasure.

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