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"It had been expelled after the wire holding the rib cage failed. He expired almost immediately. This was a malpractice suit that involved a former employer of mine and a couple of former colleagues."

"The original doctor went back to the patient and, within five minutes of telling him he was essentially a dead man walking, said everything was fine and that they were going to get the urine out after all.

This wasn't her only screw-up, of course (I've seen her letting pulmonary embolisms wait for HOURS), but this is the one that has stayed with me the most, because, what the hell?

To top it all off, she was incredibly self-important, which I suspect heavily influenced the way she practiced medicine. And I was supposed to learn from this doctor...I still get angry just thinking about it."

"I held firm and informed him that it was very obvious, by assessing the patient, that he did NOT know basic female anatomy, and the clitoris is NOT a hole or even remotely similar to the urethra. I wrote up an incident report and informed the charge nurse. He remained resolute in his complete idiocy. He didn't work there much longer."

"This event, among others, made me decide to study medicine. Today, I work as a doctor and keep advocating that you need to take a nurse's worry seriously." 

"Another instance was when, while doing a posterior spine fixation, a screw was too long and pierced the aorta, killing a 20-something-year-old woman. I was on the trauma service and got called to help with the resuscitation in PACU (Post-Anesthesia Care Unit) by the primary surgical team."

"The ER we brought him to was and is chronically understaffed and underfunded. He got put in a room, apparently had his vitals taken, and then wasn't looked at again until hours later, when he was found dead. I was so mad when I heard about his outcome. I felt like I should have spoken up, but I was a baby EMT with no prior medical experience."

"After discussion with the medical director and a phone call to their oncologist (who was paged in the hospital and told me their labs were stable in the hospital, but the hemoglobin, hematocrit, and red blood cells were significantly higher than their last blood draw), I questioned the oncologist. How could someone with this myelodysplastic syndrome regenerate their red blood cells when they are incapable? And if it’s possible, how could the labs reported for this patient actually be for a different patient due to a mix-up? After a pause, they asked that I send them back to the hospital. 

The patient required two or three surgeries to correct the damage to the urethra and bladder (I can’t quite remember exactly what their family told me at the time).

There was gross incompetence and medical errors across the board at the nursing facility, hospital, and even when the Emergency Medical Technicians transferred."

"While performing CPR, there’s something called the chain of survival. Early recognition, good CPR, early defibrillation….all of these things have to go right, and your chances of survival go way, way up. And for this guy, it did. It was a good save. But then the guy was murdered in the ER.

"The doctor proceeded to keep saying, 'push, push,' and pulled at the baby. Then there was a sickening 'pop' noise. She thought, 'I don’t feel the baby anymore, so I must have had the baby.' The room is in utter chaos. Then the doctor said to push again, and 'Put her to sleep.' She woke up, and the baby died.

Later, a nurse disclosed to her that the baby was actually decapitated during labor because the doctor was pulling so hard, and her cervix was nowhere near ready. She eventually had the head removed during a C-section, and another doctor reattached the head so she could at least see the baby and say her goodbyes.

The doctor was cleared of wrongdoing. The tribunal said she felt remorse for what happened and never blamed anyone else."

Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.