Appropriate

For those who are obsessive with terminology, medical errors are classified as follows:

1. mistakes, which could be: (i) knowledge based; or (ii) rule based (misapplying a rules, or fail to apply a rule)
2. skill based errors, which could be: (i) slip (e.g. writing "gm" for "mg"); or (ii) lapse (forget to write the treatment)

But, giving the correct opinion does not always mean that the patient would recover - and you wouldn't call that a medical incident if the patient dies despite appropriate treatment. With hindsight, of course, some of the appropriate treatment may not be all that appropriate. We can only make the best judgement from the information at hand. Otherwise we would have to go back and sue Issac Newton for not performing experiments accurate enough by the modern standard !

PS. I am more inclined to sue the in-charge physician of Alexander the Great for not measuring the blood pressure, not to say failed to perform blood culture and abdominal CT scan, for the great warrior.

For details, please see Oldach DW, et al. A mysterious death. N Engl J Med 1998; 338: 1764-1769.