Dr. John T. Wolf
My husband, John T. Wolf MD, can be counted as one of the 98,000 deaths attributed to medical errors each year in the US. He was a board certified plastic surgeon with a specialty in hand surgery totally devoted to his profession. In May of 2000, John elected to have laparoscopic surgery to remove his gall bladder. His surgeon performed the surgery at an ambulatory surgery center without the benefit of certain equipment, and ultimately perforated his bowel. With John in extreme pain, he was transferred by ambulance to a local hospital where he sat on a ward for over 50 hours. On the ward, his condition deteriorated but no one seemed to recognize his critical situation. Ultimately, the perforation was diagnosed and he underwent a second surgery to repair the hole in his bowel. For ten days, John was in a local ICU not equipped to take care of him. I called a mentor of his and he helped me secure a transfer to a large tertiary hospital. John died that same day. In May of 2000, over a two week period, I had to bury my husband, close his practice and lay off his staff.
John Wolf had everything to live for. He grew up in rural Oklahoma and from a very young age wanted to be a doctor. He worked his way through college, graduated from Dartmouth Medical School in 1976; did his residency at Brown University and fellowship at Harvard. John worked hard his entire life and was an outstanding and caring physician, a true patient advocate. After John’s death, I realized the only way to honor him was to speak out about medical error and advocate for patient safety. First, I had to come to grips with the fact that this was not just fate or some tragic situation that happened upon John and my family. Medical errors with devastating consequences are more prevalent that anyone wants to imagine and until we can speak openly and honestly there will not be change.
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Sound Off for Patient Safety 