Errors In The Medical Field

The goal of this paper is to investigate the application of technology to reduce error in healthcare. The Institute of Medicine reports: to Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System in 1999, which estimates of more than a million injuries and 100,000 deaths attributable to medical errors annually. This numbers of deaths are errors that resulted from medical errors..

It is shocking to know that every year 98000 patients die from medical errors that can be prevented(Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M. S. (Eds.), 2000). Medical errors are not a new issue in our healthcare system; these have been around for a long time. Hospitals have been trying to improve quality care and patients safety by implementing different strategies to prevent and reduce medical errors for past thirty years. Medical errors are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in America (Allen, 2013). In addition medical errors are costing our healthcare system an estimated $735 billion to $980 billion (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2012).

Data input is critical in the medical office environment – it is essential that all information that is input into the system or other documents are up-to-date and accurate. Multitasking is a required skill for being a medical assistant, but with constant distractions such as patients, ringing phones, and coworkers, it can be easy to slip up and enter the wrong information, which is why consistently double and triple checking to ensure correctness is vital. Misinformation may result in documents and records being misfiled, which can lead to missed appointments, incorrect patient files, and frustration from both clients and physicians. Business interactions such as billing, receipts, consent forms, and other documents rely on precise information

Sitting in the audiology suite that had with two other audiologist and the patient’s wife I felt that this is place that I should be. When questions were exchanged between the patient and the audiologist, I realized that I needed to be able to clearly pronounce words and founded it enjoying task - I didn’t get frustrated. I am in currently shadowing a 3 months cochlear implant patient check-in. The patient was man that was more than happy to allow me to shadow his appointment. During all numerous hearing test, the patient had complained about how certain sounds were high pitched. After modifying certain frequency, the patient was retested and felt much better. This experience is what attracted me to a career in audiology was the positive impact an audiologist can have on people’s lives. Audiologist can help older people reconnect with family and friends when they have been slipping into a silent world and began giving up on participating in conversations. It is quite special the role an audiologist has in keeping people connected with one another.

Cognitive errors of omission and commission are the most common types of medical errors that will happen in the workplace environment.

Computers have evolved at an extremely fast pace in the past few years. We would be at an extreme disadvantage if we did not take the opportunity to use this to our benefit. With the common place of wireless networks and mobile platforms, such as the IPAD, doctors could carry out such changes fairly readily and efficiently. This would allow for the text to be easily read, and give the doctors one more tool for correcting spelling errors as well. It has already been proven that computers can greatly reduce the errors made as evidenced by an excerpt of one article "... during the study, the non-missed-dose medication error rate fell 81 percent, from 142 per 1,000

Section 2 of this report, Errors in Health Care: A Leading Cause of Death and Injury, surveys the writing on mistakes to evaluate current comprehension of the greatness of the issue and distinguishes various issues that hinder consideration regarding persistent security. A general absence of data on and attention to mistakes in human services by buyers and shoppers makes it unthinkable for them to request better care. The way of life of pharmaceutical make a desire of flawlessness and ascribes mistakes to lack of regard or inadequacy. Obligation concerns demoralize the surfacing of mistakes and correspondence about how to amend them. The absence of unequivocal and reliable models for understanding wellbeing makes holes in authorizing and accreditation

Medical errors have adverse effect on health care organization structure because it put a question mark on health profession’s reputation. The medical error definitely can cause harm to the patient or even the death. Medical errors can happen anywhere in healthcare system: in hospitals, clinics, surgery rooms. Medical mistakes can arise from doctors, nurses, surgeons, hospital administration, and many others. Medical errors affect the health care organizational structure, culture, and social in many ways. Medication errors have severe direct and indirect effects on health care organizational structure, and culture is usually the outcome of breakdowns in a system of care. Many reasons can involve in medical errors such as, miscommunication

As a medical assistant, it is my responsibility to ensure communication is clear and written properly. If the patient doesn’t understand something, it is also my job to clarify and explain it to them and make sure they understand everything.

A hazard is the potential to harm life, health, property or environment and a risk is the chance of harm as a result of a hazard, sometimes these can be hard to identify but there are many ways to ensure you minimise injury or illness to workers in an organisation. Safety inspection is usually the first way of identifying a hazard which is having a safety representative to look around and ensure everything is safe. PCBUs’ and officers should look over any previous incidents or near misses to see if there are any hidden hazards. They should encourage all workers to report anything they feel is potentially dangerous and if something does result in an injury (minor or major) to report it straight away so they can have a look at it. A risk is the

Medication errors are among the most common medical errors, harming and costing millions of patients in the world very year. Prevention of medication errors is, therefore, a high priority worldwide. Nowadays, various information technology (IT) systems are widely used to prevent and reduce medication errors. Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) with patient-specific decision support is one of the most powerful IT systems used by physicians to improve patient safety in various healthcare settings. As an example, application of CPOE systems has significantly reduced errors related to dosing of psychoactive medications. Pharmacy dispensing systems, including drug-dispensing

Hospitals aim to provide quality and satisfactory patient care while simultaneously trying to reduce costs. This means that as nurses, we have to strive to provide holistic care for our patients and avoid making preventable mistakes because it is very expensive. Medicare used to pay for errors that were made by healthcare providers during a patient’s hospital stay, but now Medicare will not reimburse for preventable errors (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2014). Many hospitals are enforcing guidelines to prevent patients from obtaining hospital-acquired infections.

Medical errors are avoidable mistakes in the health care. These errors can take place in any type of health care institution. Medical errors can happen during medical tests and diagnosis, administration of medications, during surgery, and even lab reports, such as the mixing of two patients’ blood samples. These errors are usually caused by the lack of communication between doctors, nurses and other staff. A medical error could cause a severe consequence to the patient in cases consisting of severe injuries or cause/effect any health conditions, and even death. According to recent studies medical errors are not the third leading cause of death in the United States. (Walerius. 2016)

For this assignment I chose the following search term which yielded the results listed below:

The purpose of this paper is to identify a quality safety issue. I will summarize the impact that this issue has on health care delivery. In addition, I will identify quality improvement strategies. Finally, I will share a plan to effectively implement this quality improvement strategy.