Analytical Essay On Columbia's Last Flight

For example, a woman went into Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the teaching hospital for Harvard University, to receive surgery on her leg. After the surgery had been performed, everything seemed to have gone just as planned. But when the woman’s anesthesia subsided and she looked down at her leg, she realized that the surgeon had performed a major operation on the wrong leg. Nevertheless, Schulz proposes that instead of insisting that we are perpetually right, we embrace our inaccuracy and learn from

Medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US, right behind heart disease and cancer. More than 200,000 people die annually as a result of diagnostic mistakes and negligence by healthcare professionals (Washingtonpost, 2016). In the healthcare industry, even the smallest mistakes and oversight could lead to severe consequences for both the patient and professionals. A healthcare professional would be held liable for any discrepancies that causes harm. The following case will analyze the ethical issue and negligence that lead to the death of an elderly woman.

Atul Gawande in his article “When the Doctor Makes Mistakes” exposes the mystery, uncertainty and fallibility of medicine in true stories that involve real patients. In a society where attorneys protect hospitals and physicians from zealous trials from clients following medical errors, doctors make mistakes is a testimony that Gawande a representative of other doctors speak openly about failures within the medical fields. In this article, Gawande exposes those errors with an intention of showing the entire society and specifically those within the medicine field that when errors are hidden, learning is squelched and those within the system are provided with an opportunity to continue committing the same errors. What you find when you critically analyse Gawande, “When Doctors Make Mistakes essay is how messy and uncertain medicine turns out to be. Throughout the entire article you experience the havoc within the medicine field as the inexperienced doctor misapplies a central line in a patient.

"Johns Hopkins patient safety experts have calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical error…" (John Hopkins Medicine). This soaring number has caused medical errors to become the third leading cause of death in the United States. For many people, medicine seems foreign and unknown. People who have lost loved ones due to medical error desperately look for a reason, and many times that blame falls upon doctors. Media has put a negative connotation on doctors as well, causing their reputation to plummet whenever a hospital procedure turns badly. A renown surgeon and author, Atul Gawande, uses his knowledge and experience to give people a new perspective on medicine. In the article "When Doctors Make Mistakes," Gawande uses rhetorical appeals: ethos, pathos, and logos to prove the need for a change in the medical systems and procedures. He analyzes how the public looks at doctors, giving a new perspective to enlighten the reader that even the best doctors can make mistakes.

The audience’s probable attitude and personality with respect to the Board and its findings are all addressed in the document. The attitude that the audience has is one of grief and distrust in both NASA and the Government. This is made evident in the statement, “The loss of Columbia and her crew represents a turning point, calling for a renewed public policy debate and commitment regarding human space exploration.” By stating that there is a need for renewed public policy regarding NASA’s missions, it is clear that the public opinion about NASA has been tarnished by the accident. They also have the probable objections that the Board was biased and that they do not have any effective results that could help reduce the risk that another accident like this will ever occur. However, the likely attitude that the audiences will have toward the writer are that of hope for the future and America’s return to space. This is shown when the document states, “These recommendations reflect both the Boardʼs strong support for

Blendon, R. DesRoches, C. Brodie, M., Benson, J. Rosen, A., & Schneider, A. (2002). Views of practicing physicians and the public on medical errors. New England Journal of Medicine. 347, 1933-1940.

As described by Dr. Atul Gawande in his book Complications, medicine “is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge… fallible individuals” making medicine different from other scientific fields

It holds true that government organizations gradually decline; the enthusiasm is replaced with bureaucracy, employees are resistant to change and overall performance is decreased. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is no exception to this. NASA is an example of bureaucracy having a detrimental effect on an organization. The lines of communication became skewed and were often broken while the organization was locked in an internal battle over who exactly was in charge. While there were heads of each department and heads of each branch, critical information often slipped through the cracks. It was this breakdown in communication and the failure to address known issues that was the direct cause for both the Challenger and Columbia explosions. The explosions, though separated by seventeen years, were incredibly similar. Concerns had been brought to the table and similarly dismissed as “acceptable risk.” This acceptable risk proved fatal for the crews of both space shuttles. Bureaucracy and financial expediency led to reduced federal funding, general distrust from the public, and growing disinterest. The organization that sent men to the moon is vastly different than the organization in charge today. NASA’s beginnings were less clouded in red tape and bureaucratic policies. Ideas were

Putting yourself in the shoes of the managers or engineers in the case (Ron Dittemore, Linda Ham, Don McCormack, Rodney Rocha, Pamela Madera, Calvin Schomburg), consider the following questions?

In the medical field, precision is of the utmost importance when it comes to successfully ensuring that the job is done. Even the slightest mistake can be lethal, making communication vital in the medical field. A group of doctors and nurses must communicate and act like a single unit to complete the procedure. In “When Doctors Make Mistake”, the author, Atul Gawande, recalls a case where his team worked on a specific crash victim and the breathing tube could not fit in the trachea. Due to a lack of communication, one of the staff members tried to force the tube down the trachea causing more damage. In the essay, Gawande assesses the situation and agrees with his team to bring in a specialist to solve the

It’s very clear that NASA ignored the group thinking avoidance techniques. The launch was the number one priority for the organization, and that is where all of its efforts were channeled. They made the decision to execute the launch early in their planning process, which minimized all of the variables and factors that present themselves within the hours leading to the actual execution. The advances in technology have been able to mitigate many issues, but you can’t ignore the effect of weather on the components of the shuttle. The experts brought up the concerns, but they were deliberately marginalized by the leadership. When I think of a seal, I immediately think of a $0.25 piece of rubber.

The space shuttle Columbia disaster lead NASA to finally change their culture and realize that no matter how small a threat may be perceived, it cannot be overlooked. The Columbia disaster was the second disaster in NASA’s history, that a small component, which was not adequately tested, inevitably caused a chain reaction that lead to the disintegration of the space shuttle leaving no survivors. The first disaster was Challenger in 1986. The Columbia disaster investigations lead NASA to look further than just procedures and into the culture behind the entire space shuttle program. “The recognition of human spaceflight as a develop-mental activity requires a shift in focus from operations and meeting schedules to a concern for the risks involved.” [1 p.208]

NASA failed to respond to internal procedures of operation led to Columbia disaster causing the death of seven astronauts who were on board. This then led to the suspension of flights via space shuttles for a period of about two years which was an opportunity to investigate what caused the failure of NASA. The space craft wing had been breached by a foam that fell from the external tank of the shuttle (Howell, 2013). Failure of NASA was clear as the issue of the foam had occurred before therefore NASA was supposed to have come up with a way of preventing the fatal situation from occurring again. NASA officials are alleged to have declined the offer requested by the department of defense to use the orbital cameras of spying to get a better and

Then it came time for the Apollo missions. Eleven manned launches into space, 6 of which landing on the moon, carried man farther than ever before. Apollo 1 was scheduled to be the first in the series. Just 4 days before the launch, there was a problem. During a test flight, a fire broke out inside the sealed capsule from faulty wiring. The fire suffocated the 3 astronauts inside. NASA launched a full investigation (Aldrin 3). “It exposed deep flaws in our capsules and procedures”, said Gene Kranz, the retired chief flight director at NASA during the Gemini and Apollo missions (When).

Mukherjee (2015) talks about the three laws of medicine however these are his personal laws that may or may not be followed by other health professionals. He explains each law that he had learned through personal experiences with patients. The first law is ‘A strong intuition is much more powerful than a weak test,’ explains that there may be some hidden variable when diagnosing a patient that could be crucial in life or death situations. A variable could be the environment that a person lives in or their lifestyle and this chapter notes to know when to look for small clues that could possibly help. The second law is ‘”Normals” teach us rules; “outliers” teach us laws, ' talks about how normal cases teach and build the rules of what should be done on a regular basis of patients, what is normal. Outliers are the cases where it may untreatable but has the chance to reshape and even advance medicine. The third law is 'For every perfect medical experiment, there is a perfect human bias, ' talks about how we hope for a medical treatment that can help treat a disease but it is biased because it either works or doesn’t work despite a few anomalies. These are laws Mukherjee has learned from experience and applies throughout his career, they may not be followed by all health practitioners.