Surgeon Successfully Sued for Improvising in the Operating Room
In a frankly baffling case, a Hawaii jury has awarded $5.5 million to the family of a man who had a screwdriver inserted into his spine, apparently without problem. The patient was operated on by Dr. Robert Ricketson at Hilo Medical Center for a spine problem. With the patient under anesthesia and the operation underway, the surgeon apparently realized the titanium rod needed was not available. Ricketson then fashioned a rod out of a piece of screwdriver and completed the operation. The patient reportedly did well and died two years later.
After the patient’s death, the family sued the hospital not for a bad medical outcome but for wrongful credentialing of the surgeon to practice medicine, because of license restrictions in other states.
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Copyright 2006 Insidesurgery.com
Anonymous says
Doctor Pro Se says
The reason the patient’s family sued was that he progressively became paralyzed over the next two years. He had diabetic neuropathy but the sad part of the evidence which could not be introduced at trial was that the patient again fell 5 times two months after discharge from HMC, dislodging one rod. He was then transferred to Queens Medical Center in Honolulu where the rods were revised by Dr. Terry Smith. Post op, the patient developed a large spinal hematoma that went ignored for five days. He was taken back to surgery, but by then, he had become paraplegic and incontinent of both bladder and bowel. He never recovered. The jury never was able to understand the emergent need for evacuation of a post op SEH. As a pro se defendant, Dr. Ricketson could not adequately inform the jury of this due to the legal restrictions in the Rules of Evidence.