Here is the best article on preparing for a deposition. Defendants should read it six times, and take it as a checklist to the preparation session with their own attorney.

http://forthedefense.org/CD/Public/FTD/2006/July/2006%20July%20FTD%20-%20Simply%20Positive%20-%20Preparing%20Witnesses%20for%20Deposition.pdf

This one is OK.

http://forthedefense.org/CD/Public/FTD/2007/November/2007%20November%20FTD%20-%20Defendant%20Physician%20Deposition%20Preparation.pdf

I wanted to pass in a link…in regard to Docs and nationlized health.

http://www.docs4patientcare.org/index2.html

You said something that caught my attention as far as lawsuits go.

But first… I have to say… I just don’t think like this and so I am really getting a mini law education with these posts and comments.

You said “NO! Repeat after me. The patient didn’t have signs of sepsis when he arrived in the emergency department, so there was no reason to initially suspect it.’”

I am one of those patients who will smile, joke, be friendly..whatever and it is misleading for what I might *really* be experiencing. I came in on the stretcher that way and was told to go to the waiting room, but they later found I had pre-sepsis, etc. If I (God forbid) had died of sepsis… then it’s possible some attorney would be blaming the delay in treatment as the cause for what happened to me?

Well how in the world is the staff supposed to prevent something like that? How could they know without labs if a patient doesn’t present at death’s door when they arrive? And if there are no beds in the ED because they are so busy and a pt *seems* alright… how can the DR be held accountable? It doesn’t seem fair.

Of course it didn’t feel fair to me being that sick and waiting so long… but an ED is just that… an EMERGENCY dept. and they take the ones that seem the most ill first.

It would seem you are potentially involved in a game of Russian Roulette with every shift.

Does this work? Being irritated doesn’t make me loosen up.

WC, I know what you’re saying here – she didn’t want you to go rambling off into tangents, which is the natural tendency for deponents. I often tell my clients that if the question is “What time is it?”, don’t tell me how to make a watch, just tell me it’s 4:30. But the above sounds more like she’s directing you in what to say rather than letting you say what happened and encouraging you to be more concise. You may want to make that more clear.