Medical Error Essay

Critique of Gawande, “When Doctors Make Mistakes” 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.

Students go through four years of medical schools and countless years of residency just to learn and practice medicine and its connection with humanities. Once they are done with rigorous training, they believe that they, themselves, know everything and that every patient will leave the hospital or clinic cured, treated, and happy. However, that is not the case. No matter how one does on their med school boards, physicians are prone to mistakes. Physicians have encountered at least one mistake during their career. Different people have different perspectives concerning errors in the medicine field. Atul Gawande’s “Complications: A Surgeon’s Note on an Imperfect Science” and Dr. Goldman’s TED Talk emphasize errors in a hospital or clinical setting.

References 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.

Background 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).

One of the recommendations for healthcare organizations to employ in an effort to reduce the number of errors is to advocate for voluntary error reporting nationally while conducting research and developing tools for patient safety. This way, information about errors can be gathered and prevented from reoccurring at health care sites and by health care providers. Voluntary error reporting will act as a warning of potential or actual errors and suggest ways to avoid them in the future.

II. Background Each year medical errors cause more than 400,000 American deaths and at least 10-20 times that number experience serious harm. Researchers say that is equivalent to “three 747 airplanes crashing each day.” Medical errors rank as the third-leading cause of death in America. Therefore, patient safety is a national concern.

Millions of Americans surrender to conditions that are both preventable and manageable annually. Besides chronic diseases, researchers have identified that the third leading cause of death in America is the errors conducted by professional medical practitioners. While medicine is a highly considered field, some of the practices that contribute to the errors observed include the absence of patient safety, poorly coordinated care, and inefficient healthcare quality improvement. Significant steps that can be taken to reduce deaths caused by medical errors include good communication, cooperation, use of advanced technology and implementation of quality healthcare among

According to the article, the economics of health care quality and medical errors, in 2008 medical errors costs the United States $19.5 billion. It goes without saying that this a huge problem. It’s relieving to know that we are aware of several adverse detection (AE) methods such as voluntary or incident reporting, medical record review, administrative surveillance, clinical observation, and electronic health record surveillance. Voluntary reporting is the most common but unreliable way of detecting adverse events. It depends on the physician reporting and admitting that an adverse outcome as occurred. However, it has been shown to underestimate adverse events by a factor of 50 and often identifies issues other than true safety

According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, To Err Is Human, the majority of medical errors result from faulty systems and processes, not individuals (Hughes, 2008). However, due to processes that are inefficient and variable, multiple health insurance, differences in provider education and experience, and other factors that contribute to the complexity of health care the IOM has put together six aims of health care that is effective, safe, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable (Hughes, 2008).

New innovations are being created every year to help improve and protect patients from reckless and preventable errors. As healthcare providers, it is our duty to provide care ethically and to do no harm to our patients. On the contrary, “the culture of cover-up” still continues to exist today and although technology and informatics has progressively increased quality care, it has not completely eradicated errors. Integrity is the key component for every healthcare provider, along with other characteristics. Therefore, disclosing medical errors with our patients is imperative and our patients and their families deserve to know what occurred during their time of care. Technology is not able to prevent every mishap that causes patients harm (Gibson & Singh, 2003). On the other hand, communication and learning from the mistake can. As Gibson and Singh (2003) so eloquently stated, “…wise people learn form their mistakes, and those who don’t are bound to repeat

Doctors Make Mistakes In Dr. Goldman’s article “Doctors Make Mistakes: A Commentary on Medical Errors” (TedTalk) he asserts the doctors are reluctant to admit making errors. Doctors are human so they make errors but they are reluctant to admit them. Dr. Goldman states that a culture of denial and shame exists in the medical community. He further asserts that the culture is pervasive within the medical profession and that it makes doctors afraid to come forward.

Health care leadership LHC1023 Individual Assignment Lambton College In Toronto Name: Ravindrakumar Goswami (c0678790) Topic: The importance of patient/family apology in adverse events Submitted on: July 8,2016 Name of educator: Junie facey Introduction: At the point when patients experience harm whether from the movement of the patient's medical condition or from a few events identified with their health care delivery , they have to know. At the point when things have gone uniquely in contrast to expected, a large portion of the patients need information about what's the issue with him/her. In the event that oversights were made, they additionally need a statement of regret, and affirmation that stepes are being taken

Reporting errors can strengthen the processes of care and also enhance the quality of care. To effectively avoid further errors that can cause harm to patients, improvements must be made on the incidents or events reported in reporting system. Reporting errors can help the organizations better understand what happened, identify the factors that cause the occurrence of errors or incidents, determine its frequency and predict whether it could happen again and find an intervention to prevent or to

Alarm Fatigue Prevention Medicine is an always evolving field, and continues to grow in the pursuit of people health benefit. As time has passed better research studies, discoveries, treatments and improvement of patient outcomes has been the pride of the medical field. However; despite all the improvements in medical advancement, preventable medical errors have become a major problem in the field. About a decade ago, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) investigated and created the report To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System, in that report the IOM came to the conclusion that approximately 98,000 people has died yearly in the United States as a consequence of an preventable medical error (RWJF, 2011). Some of these errors are caused

Organizational Responsibility & Current Health Care Issues HCS - 545 11/19/2012 Organizational Responsibility & Current Health Care Issues In today's modern world with plenty of technology, it is hard to believe that we cannot figure out how to reduce Medical errors. The issue of medical error is not new in health care organizations. It has been in spot light since 1990's, when government did research on sudden increase in number of death in the hospitals. According to Lester, H., & Tritter, J. (2001), "Medical error is an actual or potential serious lapse in the standard of care provided to a patient, or harm caused to a patient through the performance of a health service or health care professional." Medical errors