Essay On Medical Errors

Medical malpractice lawsuits are an extremely serious topic and have affected numerous patients, doctors, and hospitals across the country. Medical malpractice is defined as “improper, unskilled or negligent treatment of a patient by a physician, dentist, nurse, pharmacist, or other health care professional” (Medical malpractice, n.d.). If a doctor acts negligent and causes harm to a patient, malpractice lawsuits arise. Negligence is the concept of the liability concerning claims of medical malpractice, making this type of litigation part of tort law. Tort law provides that one person may litigate negligence to recover damages for personal injury. Negligence laws are designed to deter careless behavior and also to

Level 2 Award in Employment Responsibilities and Rights in Health, Social Care, Children and Young People's Settings (QCF)

How would Ed’s blood help protect him from a foreign invader such as the one now in his system?

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).

Causes of major medical errors have many different factors and influences. This includes why the patient was being seen to allow such an error, what medical guideline or guideline’s that where not followed that caused the error, what could have been done by staff members to prevent the error, etc. When errors take place, repercussions follow such as the cost incurred to the patient or patient family members, fines the medical worker must pay, and most importantly what is the patients status/prognosis. Not all patients prevail and make it through such awful medical errors.

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

The Medicines Act 1968, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (and later amendments), the Misuse of Drugs (Safe Custody) Regulations 1973 (and later amendments), the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974), COSHH, the Mental Capacity Act (2005) the Access to health records Act (1990), the Data Protection Act (1998) plus equality legislation.

A physician assistant is a medical practitioner who works under the supervision of a licensed doctor. However the doctor does not have to be present while the physician assistant performs. If a doctor is unavailable and it is an emergency the physician assistant or PAs can talk over the phone with a doctor. Fewer than 100 PAs were practicing in 1970 and about 74,800 physician assistants are employed in the United States now (“Physician”). Physician assistants help the community everyday by helping with illness, and a lot of other health issues. They work every day to help and treat people and they are a big help to doctors. Pas alleviate some stress from the doctors and creates a healthier environment for everyone.

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)

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.

Sure hypothetically speaking we can say that by firing few employees he protected the jobs of other employees.But an employee working under the fear of losing his job is likely to work less efficiently. Employees nowadays represent a major part of the value of any company perhaps also customers (who rely upon the business for goods/services).They qualitatively contribute to the company as intellectual capital which is not auditable. In order to motivate people to work hard for the interests of the company, a level of trust must be built with them. Likewise it is important for trust to develop between the organization and its external environment (customers, suppliers, government, and interest groups). Such trust can only grow from the perceived security that the interests of all individuals and stakeholders are taken into account.

Physicians are a crucial part of the healthcare team that aids in healing and betterment of all aspects of patient care. However, there is a prevalence of between five and fifteen percent of physician that suffer from a part of impairment that affects their position and can affect patient care (Griffith). Physician impairment can range on a spectrum from alcohol abuse to depression. It is important to address these concerns for proper patient safety. In order to effectively diagnose and provide treatment, it is important that all members of the medical staff, administration and the board work together to provide aid to the concerning physician.

     Imagine yourself lying on an operating table, motionless, quiet. Above, you notice people standing over you. You try to speak but the words just cannot come out. Your arms feel as if they are plastered to the table. You begin to stand up but feel as if weights are strapped to your back and you are bound to the table. Suddenly you feel a sharp pain in your midsection. In and out, you see a surgeon slicing your body open with a scalpel. Every motion the masked person makes is as if you are being torn apart from the inside out. One would hope this would simply be a nightmare and they will wake up and everything will be fine. In this instance, this person will

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.

To ease the stress of having to lay people off, managers should not think about it too much. In the case it says that some managers stress out thinking about how it’s going to affect those people’s lives. HR managers should think of it as they’re job, something they must do. Some employees get fired because they’re not performing very well, and knowing that the employee wasn’t exactly putting much effort can help get rid of the sadness of letting them go. It’s another case if it’s a good employee who has to be laid off due to some circumstances. In this situation, managers can give them good recommendation letters so they can find new jobs more easily. It could relieve some of the guilt and sadness over firing someone who has been doing an honest