By Nick Buglione
One week later, he was dead.
Although Michael's concerned mother knew something was wrong with him and had rushed him to several different emergency rooms days after the surgery, doctors insisted he was "fine." It was later determined he had died of blood poisoning.
"He went in for a tonsillectomy at a local hospital on a Tuesday and then came home that night," said Corina, a Wantagh resident and mother of two other children. "On Thursday I saw blood in his teeth...Saturday, he was hemorrhaging and throwing up blood.
"It was a routine tonsillectomy. Now I've learned over the years that there's nothing that's routine."
The medical mishap that cost Corina her young child haunted her for eight long years. Then, in 1998, she decided to turn her anguish into action.
"I wanted people to know that if it could happen to me, it could happen to them," Corina said. So she started up a New York chapter of PULSE, Patients United Limiting Substandards and Errors in Healthcare, which originated in Colorado.
"PULSE is a consumer group of people who have survived medical errors," said Corina, president of the New York chapter. Now with some 200 members, New York's PULSE has become a veritable advocate for patients, fighting most notably for passage of New York's physician profiling law in 2000.
Two years ago, Corina spearheaded the first Patient Safety Awareness Week, falling on the second week in March -- the same week her son died.
Last Sunday residents from Merrick, Bellmore and all over the county gathered in East Meadow to kick off this year's Patient Safety Awareness Week with a 26.2-mile marathon, spanning from the Nassau University Medical Center to the Northport Veterans Medical Center in Suffolk.
About 10 Long Islanders, led by three-time ironman triathlon competitor Bryant Kaplan, actually did the running. Starting west on Hempstead Turnpike, they headed north on Carman Avenue, up Salisbury Park Drive, to Newbridge Road, en route to their Suffolk destination. Support vehicles and volunteers followed, distributing literature about patient safety at eight rest stops along the way.
"Ilene wanted to try something to get a little more media attention to the week this year, so we decided to organize a run," said Kaplan, who operates a non-profit drug and alcohol rehabilitation program in Bethpage. "It's a serious run. It's a marathon."
Corina has done a good job drawing attention to Patient Safety Awareness Week on her own. In just its second year, the week has grown into a national event.
"As of today, 49 states are going full ahead with it," Corina said. "I'm incredibly proud of it. It just shows you how far one person can go."
This year, the National Patient Safety Foundation offered its support and recognition of the week. "We anticipate that many hospitals will implement their own Patient Safety Awareness Week initiatives, ranging from suggestion boxes for patients to poster contests and community panel discussions," said Robert Krawisz, executive director of the Chicago-based foundation.
"The key point is that participants in this event can tailor their own observance to the need of their workplace and local community."
A 1999 Institute of Medicine report revealed that 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur each year owing to medical errors; that's the equivalent of a jumbo jet with 250 passengers fatally crashing every day. What's more, those medical errors carry an associated cost of $17 to $29 billion, the Institute found.
"There has been a lot of attention on patient safety in the media in the last several years," said Dr. Mark Graber, chief of medicine at the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
For their own safety, patients need to play a more active role in the health-care process, Graber said. They need to ask more questions if they don't understand something or if they're unsure that the medicine they're taking might negatively interact with another.
"We [doctors] just assume that our patients take in and remember everything that we tell them," Graber said. "That's not the case. It's also very important for them to write things down."
To learn more about patient safety, visit www.NPSF.org or www.pulseofny.com.
