Humans make mistakes. However, when doctors are entrusted with patients’ lives they must uphold the appropriate standard of care. It is no excuse for a doctor to practice careless medicine and simply defend by saying, “everyone makes mistakes.” Indeed, a preventable error constitutes medical malpractice when a doctor fails to use reasonable care. Sadly, many errors can have fatal consequences. Doctor’s have a responsibility to avoid mistakes and prevent needless trauma or death.

Examples of Malpractice:
1) Carol was experiencing pain in her right eye. Taking the advice of a doctor, she chose to undergo eye surgery. The anesthesia used contained two components: one to paralyze and one to cause sleep. However, Carol was only paralyzed. She was awake for the two hour operation, a time in which she could hear the doctor saying, “…cut deeper, pull harder…” She was even conscious at the time her eye was being extracted. Finally, when her doctor realized she was conscious, he began to adminster more of the nerve-blocking anesthesia. Sadly, that caused her to feel like she was on fire. It is estimated that up to 42,000 people experience harm from these types of cases every year in the US.

2) The last thing you might expect to go wrong during surgery is to be set on fire. Certainly, that does not seem even possible. Unfortunately, in 2009 Janice McCall, age sixty five, caught on fire during surgery. In another case, Catherine Reuter, age seventy four, suffered second and third degree burns after a cauterizing tool severely burned her face. She never fully recovered and died in the hospital two years later.

http://listverse.com/2013/05/29/10-horrible-cases-of-medical-malpractice/