Disability advocates and the family of a tetraplegic patient in Quebec are calling for an independent inquiry after a four day stay on an emergency department stretcher left him with a pressure ulcer so painful that he opted for medically assisted death.
Normand Meunier, 66, died surrounded by family on 29 March. He had been told by doctors that an open wound on his buttock had a poor prognosis and was unlikely to heal for months at best.
Meunier had been tetraplegic since a spinal cord injury in 2022. His January stay in the emergency department at Saint-Jérôme Hospital was his third visit this past winter for a respiratory infection.
“Every time we go to the hospital, …
An anaesthesiologist in Dallas, Texas, could face a prison sentence of 190 years after he was convicted of injecting a deadly cocktail of drugs into intravenous (IV) saline bags, leading to cardiac emergencies on the operating table and the death of a fellow doctor who took a bag home to treat herself for dehydration.
Raynaldo Riviera Ortiz Jr, 60, was a “medical terrorist” who “assembled ticking time bombs, then sat in wait as those medical time bombs went off one by one,” said US attorney Leigha Simonton.
Ortiz’s actions had left “toxic cocktails flowing into the veins of patients who were often at their most vulnerable, lying unconscious on …
Ethnic minorities receive markedly worse healthcare in every US state, finds Commonwealth Fund bmj.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bmj.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Senior doctors and medical professors at South Korean teaching hospitals began submitting resignations on 25 March, showing support for junior doctors striking over the government’s plan to increase medical school places from about 3100 to 5100 in a single year.
With an ageing population, the lowest doctor-to-patient ratio in the developed world, and some of the highest doctor pay, the government’s plan to increase physician numbers has broad public support. In a February Gallup poll, 76% of South Koreans backed the plan and only 16% were against.
But most junior doctors are fiercely opposed and have been on strike since 20 February. They argue that physician quality will suffer and that new doctors will not take up jobs in rural and underserved areas but will cluster in cities in high paid specialties like dermatology and plastic surgery. They also suggest that more doctors will lead to more unnecessary treatments in the largely privatised medical system.
Medical school leaders
Virologist who was fired from research laboratory in Canada over security threat resurfaces in China bmj.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bmj.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.