Medical Errors

One of the most critical factors which contribute to the number of preventable cases of healthcare harm is the culture of silence surrounding these cases. The fear of medical providers to report incidences is related to the possibility of punishment and liability due to a medical error (Discovery, 2010). The criminalization of some acts of medical error has resulted in job dismissal, criminal charges and jail time for some healthcare workers. This is despite the fact that the system they are working in helped to create the situation which led to the error in the first place. Human error, due to fatigue and system errors can result in deadly consequences, but by criminalizing the error it effectively shuts down the ability to correct the root problem. Healthcare workers, working at all levels within the medical system, can provide valuable input on how to improve the processes and prevent harm from occurring (Discovery, 2010).

"To continuously improve health care for the public, in collaboration with other stakeholders, by evaluating health care organizations and inspiring them to excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value” (Jointcommission.org, 2015). These requirements are regimented in the National Patient Safety Goals and are enforced via surveys and internal inspections to ensure that healthcare institutions abide by the safety mechanisms put in place to facilitate the optimal patient outcomes and environments.

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).

Keeping patients safe is essential in today’s health care system, but patient safety events that violate that safety are increasing each year. It was only recently, that the focus on patient safety was reinforced by a report prepared by Institute of medicine (IOM) entitled ” To err is human, building a safer health system”(Wakefield & Iliffe,2002).This report found that approx-imately 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur each year due to medical errors and that the majority was preventable. Deaths due to medical errors exceed deaths due to many other causes such as like HIV infections, breast cancer and even traffic accidents (Wakefield & Iliffe, 2002). After this IOM reports, President Clinton established quality interagency

Frech cited several keys to the high costs here including marketing by pharmaceutical companies; the incredible number (around 20 percent) of the people who work in the medical field but never come into contact with any patient and the lack of wellness programs and poor lifestyle

Patient safety one of the driving forces of healthcare. Patient safety is defined as, “ the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of healthcare or as the prevention of errors and adverse events caused by the provision of healthcare rather than the patient’s underlying disease process. (Kangasniemi, Vaismoradi, Jasper, &Turunen, 2013)”. It was just as important in the past as it is day. Our healthcare field continues to strive to make improvement toward safer care for patients across the country.

98,000 preventable deaths each year, with an associated cost of $17 to $29 billion (IOM, 1999).

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)

According to Media Health Leaders, medical mistakes are the third leading cause of death in the United States. This statistic shows there is an intense problem in not only our country, but around the world, and there needs to be a change. These changes should include requiring all doctors to complete a checklist of requirements before any surgery, calling for every hospital to use brainwave monitors during surgery, and encouraging communication between doctors and both their colleagues and patients.

In my opinion, the essay I wrote on medical mistakes was the hardest to complete because of several reasons. I was not sure how effective certain strategies were, I had trouble backing them up, and I was not sure which strategies were in use and which were not. Some ideas I mentioned in my essay may not have been as effective as I thought. Due to this, backing them up became trouble. My research was not strong enough to support my ideas. Many ideas mentioned were already in use today causing unoriginality. Grammar was a struggle for me because I was not strong in it yet and many rules taught to me could not be applied due to my lack of understanding. My parallelism was off and I used many dead words. My concluding paragraph had the wrong number of sentences and I cited incorrectly. The many mistakes I made taught me how to effectively research, use grammar correctly, and cite properly.

Wrong site, wrong procedure, and wrong patient errors are avoidable safety issues. Nearly 1.9 trillion dollars are spent on medical errors each year in the United States (Catalano & Fickenscher, 2008). Between 1995 and 2007, 691 wrong-site surgeries have been reported to The Joint Commission's Sentinel Event data repository (AHC Media LLC, 2008). In 2003 in response to the outcry for better patient safety The Joint Commission

The U.S. Healthcare is arguably a perfection and efficacious with the advanced medications and technologies to bring the best quality of care and service to the people before-during-and after surgery, illness, check-up, and/or follow-up. The world of health information system can be view as perfection where highly advanced, technologies/systems, medications, and treatments are created to heal diseases and illnesses, and benefits the hospital as well. EHR, EMR and automation are advance systems built to prevent medical errors and transferring paper document into electronic documents where is can be access and review at any place and anytime for staff and physician convenient. According to Canadian Journal of Surgery article, Medical errors is one of the leading cause of death in America, nearly taking thousands of life each year due to unsustainable medical errors. This poses a threat to patient safety and trust, causing serious of problems to arise within healthcare. Medical errors are frequent and are usually “a mistake or a potential” that result from typos, systems malfunctions, misuse medication, non-qualified staff, and possibly language barriers. The causes of medical errors are varied, in which, can cause potential harm and injury to the patients or worse, “death”.

The relationship between communication and errors has been well established in the healthcare setting, affecting patient safety and placing the organization in a position of risk (Friesen, Hughes and Zorn, 2007; Wasserman, 2014, Sears et al, 2013). Errors still occur, however, and there is a focus on how healthcare can learn from the behaviors of high-reliability industries (Verschoor et al, 2007). One such behavior is that of a Safety Briefing (DSB), through which an organization empowers every employee to be able to report issues that have an effect, or potential effect on safety processes (Kelly, 2013; Rice, 2013; Steelman, 2014). The members of the DSB then have the responsibility for identification of poor processes, system failures and remediation of issues.

The project objective is to increase trainee awareness of current patient safety standards by 50% as evidenced by an increased participation in patient safety initiatives both in the academic and in