Memorial Day And Medical Malpractice–How Is It Related?

Unless it is a massive, life-threatening emergency, don’t go to the hospital during Memorial Day weekend. This may sound counter intuitive and, if you are suffering a serious medical emergency requiring medical attention you should go to the hospital, but if you can wait or delay a necessary surgery until Tuesday, DO IT.

Why?

Because it is a well-known fact that holiday weekends are some of the worst weekends for medical malpractice. This is for a myriad of reasons which all come together on Memorial Day weekend to make it particularly dangerous.

For instance, weekends at hospitals are some of the WORST times to go in for treatment and care! Why? Because there are commonly skeleton crews working over the weekend which means there is less help. And often times, the ones who get stuck working on the holiday weekends are the ones with the lowest seniority. This means they are likely the newest, and likely the least-experienced! Dangerous when there aren’t a lot of staff AND they ones that are there are the most inexperienced!

This is another reason to avoid holidays, because again the staff with the most seniority—and inherently the most experience—will take the days off to avoid working.

This is why Memorial Day weekend can be particularly DANGEROUS at a hospital for medical malpractice. It will be THREE days in a row likely without the full staff of experienced staff. This is just dangerous to go to the hospital unless it is life-threatening.

Studies have shown that, during this time, the number one mistake are medication errors. But also emergency surgeries that are performed by less-experienced surgeons and medical teams could also result in serious medical errors and mistakes which result in significant pain and suffering.

Again, if there is a true medical emergency GO TO THE HOSPITAL THIS WEEKEND. But if it can wait, it should! Try to get treatment during the week. And at the very least, be aware that this is a weekend where medical malpractice can occur so know you may have a case.