When an individual is ill or injured and seeks emergency medical care, a physician is thrust into a position where they must make quick decisions that affect the patient’s well-being. 

When a physician diagnoses a condition by evaluating only presenting symptoms rather than seeking the root cause, it becomes much more likely that improper or insufficient care will be provided. 

What Motivates a Physician to Diagnose Based Primarily on Patient Symptoms?

Especially in hospital care, doctors are trained to identify acute problems and make decisions based on those observations. Infections, injuries, and emergency scenarios all have distinct symptoms that help doctors make diagnoses. Based on those diagnoses, different types of treatment are recommended. 

In hospitals, physicians are not treating patients on an ongoing basis. Chronic conditions are left to primary care doctors and specialists. Doctors who work in emergency rooms and hospitals focus on the immediate problems facing patients. This type of medical care includes:

• Pain relief in a quick, if not immediate manner
• Reducing inflammation
• Stabilizing the condition of a patient
• Ensuring that life-saving care is provided

What is a Medical Symptom?

Symptoms are important ways that the human body communicates its status to the outside world and the person themselves. When a patient arrives at a hospital with a specific set of symptoms, it is because the body’s ability to cope with a problem has been exceeded. The body can no longer adapt to the problem’s cause. Its limit has been reached. 

While a symptom is the body’s way of telling the outside world that something is not right, the cause of the symptom remains unaddressed. However, in an emergency room or even a hospital setting, the focus of a physician’s treatment of a patient is largely on pain reduction rather than determining the cause of an issue. This is where treating a symptom rather than the cause can truly harm a person.

Diagnosing a Condition Correctly

Symptoms are outward signs of an inner problem. A hospital patient who presents with a range of symptoms may give a hospital physician many conditions to consider. However, those wide-ranging symptoms may also confuse or even contradict one another. When a physician looks exclusively, or even primarily, at symptoms to try and diagnose a patient, that is when major problems tend to arise for patients. 

Why Diagnosing Based on Symptoms Creates Problems for Patients

Symptoms are the outward signs of medical issues that begin inside of a person. It is not easy to determine the cause of those symptoms or to accurately diagnose a condition. 

With that said, there are methods a hospital physician can employ to make it more likely they can accurately and efficiently diagnose the cause of a patient’s medical issues. 

Following a patient’s symptoms primarily means that a correct diagnosis may not be found until much later- if at all. Delays in correctly diagnosing a condition make it more likely that a bad situation will worsen. Treatment, specialist care, and appropriate testing are often available to patients within a certain time of diagnosis. When an incorrect diagnosis is made, there are missed opportunities to receive this type of care. 

Hospitals Fool Themselves When Treating Symptoms Rather Than Causes

Speed matters in busy hospitals. When a hospital is able to treat a patient’s symptoms- usually pain- the patient can be discharged and a bed becomes available for the next patient. While some type of intervention by the hospital may help temporarily, it likely will not in the long term. In fact, the odds are good that a patient not properly treated in a hospital will experience poor outcomes.

Hospitals have a duty to treat their patients in a manner that meets or exceeds a certain standard of care. When that standard is not met, there is a potential for a medical malpractice case. The duty of care may be breached, which can result in harm to a patient. If it can be proved that the hospital’s physicians or other medical providers caused the patient to suffer damages (a worsening of the condition, time away from work, or medical bills just to name a few) that is the basis for a claim for medical malpractice. 

Examples of the Failure to Diagnose Correctly and its Impact on Patients 

There are situations in hospital and emergency medicine where patient symptoms are the primary driver of making diagnoses. What a physician can use their senses to perceive regularly leads to diagnoses in the following situations: 

• Making a correct initial diagnosis based solely on symptoms may be possible. Identifying a broken bone, for example, is something most emergency room physicians should be able to do. However, it is a secondary diagnosis for issues regarding neurological problems that may require further examination. Symptom-based diagnosis may be effective in some respects, but it is insufficient for determining the root cause of many other medical issues. 
• Hospitals have patients of all types come through their doors seeking emergency care. When a person presents with certain symptoms, their condition may appear stable at first glance. Instead of running further tests or examining the patient more closely, a physician may choose to discharge the patient. When this happens, certain conditions may be missed, and bad outcomes may result for the individual. 

Contact Crim Law Office, PLLC Today for a Free Case Review

If you or a loved one has suffered harm at a hospital, then you have no time to waste. Contact Crim Law Office, PLLC today. Our team of West Virginia failure to diagnose attorneys serves clients in hospital negligence cases.