It is the role of healthcare practitioners to ensure that their professional conduct provides the best of outcomes to their patients regardless of their nature of illnesses. Mistakes that occur when diagnosing diseases are detrimental to personal health since patients are forced to undergo wrong medical procedures. It is the reason for stating that medical mistakes cannot be forgiven since they put people’s lives at risk. This is the basis for this argument that people who have been wrongly diagnosed in hospitals should be compensated because of not only what the wrong medical and patient care procedures put them through, but also predicaments which families undergo.
Misdiagnosis is an issue of professional negligence because practitioners are adequately trained to use tools and necessary techniques to identify medical conditions accurately. In case of doubts, medical practitioners are allowed to make referrals or seek assistance from colleagues though collaboration. Therefore, there is no reason for making wrong diagnosis since there are proven approaches and diagnostic procedures which can result to accurate outcomes. Therefore, any misdiagnosis of schizophrenia should be accompanied by compensation to the victims since the errors could be avoided through adherence to professional codes of conduct and protocols (Negligence Claimline, 2017).
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Patients who fall victim to misdiagnosis also undergo painful and psychologically disturbing experiences that may even lead to their death. Patients are required to take the wrong medication creating symptoms and side effects that further complicate their medical condition. Their lives are put into risk since doctors strive to manage the wrong condition increasing pain and agony among the patients. In the process, it causes stress and other psychological issues among family members who try to commit all they have in order to make one of them feel better, only to get worse when put through medications.
According to (Garretson, 2014) and (Van Schalkwyk, Peluso, Qayyum, & McPartland, 2015), misdiagnosing schizophrenia is dangerous and even becomes severe when medications that accompany it are considered. Wrongly diagnosed patients have been recorded as living in prolonged depressive states, psychosis, neurologic issues, and to some extent seizures. This means that it patients are left at the mercy of harmful drugs which are normally accompanied by severe side effects. Based on the kind of suffering, risks, and effect on family relations, people who are misdiagnosed should be compensated not only as the consequence for misdiagnosis, but also as an indicator of the seriousness of not exercising due diligence and proper professional conduct.
Despite the need for punitive measures and compensation for the above case, some people argue that people should not be compensated in case of misdiagnosis due to acceptable conditions. They argue that schizophrenia is a mysterious diseases that is marred with lack of knowledge on its distinct causative agents. In fact, there is no single cause for this condition. Rather, it appears as a result of multiple causes related to genetics, environment, psychology, and other times hormonal changes that alter brain activity. These make it difficult to diagnose schizophrenia hence the need to accommodate some cases of misdiagnosis.
Although claimants may succeed in litigation in terms of proving negligence, breach of duty, and harm, it does not change the situation as long as the diseases is not adequately understood. In fact, it has variety of symptoms that are similar to other diseases such as bipolar disorder, depression, substance abuse and so forth, as well as varying levels of severity increasing the chance for misdiagnosis. Regardless, the risks of misdiagnosis are high and its implications are very severe to patients and their families. Therefore, compensations should be done as the way to minimize cases of negligence, as well as ensuring that diagnosis processes are thorough.
