Mistakes In The Medical Field

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.

When it comes to doctors, they all can make mistakes. The voice behind Atual Gawande’s essay comes from his own voice as he talks the kind of mistakes most doctors intend on making when it comes to saving lives. He begins by referencing a crash victim in which he stepped into while two other doctors were busy with another victim. While putting the breathing tube into the victim, something goes wrong and he and his attending John had issues restoring the victim’s breathing until Dr’s. Ball and O’Conner step in and took over. Gawande watched as they slip into the victim a endotracheal tube into her vocal cords and “In thirty seconds, with oxygen being manually ventilated through the tube, her heart was back…” (Gawande 506).

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

As a medical assistant, we all know that we commit errors daily, as well as other people. As a medical assistant, I know that it is very important to follow the rules and procedures to prevent any incidents from happening. All of us know that if failure to follow the rules correctly, it will or can lead to harm. One thing to keep in mind, is that we must always take advantage of all the advice our doctors give us, if not you will fail to keep your patients safe. It our responsibility as an MA to take precautions. Let me cite an incident about a medical assistant that committed an error on a physician.

Doctors misdiagnose between 10-15% of medical cases each year. These misdiagnosed patients have been linked to physicians being too overconfident. According to Psychology Today, in a study performed by a cognitive research psychologist, Ashley Meyer, Ph.D. and her colleagues, the researchers gave 118 physicians four cases to diagnose with two cases being easy to diagnose and the other two being difficult. The researchers asked the physicians how confident they were in their diagnosis. The results indicated that the physicians got 55% of the diagnoses correct for the two easy cases; 5% of the diagnoses were correct for the difficult cases. When asked to rate their confidence on a scale of 0-10, the physicians rated their confidence

The controversy surrounding college education and admission, both for undergraduate and graduate schools, is a debate that all students will face during their education. As a student who strives to complete both an undergraduate and graduate tuition, issues such as a bias towards high-income students, malicious health effects, and burdensome student loans intrigued me. As I continued researching the flaws in medical schools , I understood that the roots of many issues began in undergraduate schooling and pertained to most education systems. Many admissions and education obstacles start before high levels of schooling.To narrow the topic, the Ivy League seemed to have a strong two-sided argument; the prestige of the schools caused more speculation

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

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.

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.

The problem of medical errors, and in particular medication errors, prompts an immediate attention from health care industries as it demands conservative actions from health care providers. Although many health-care providers value the importance of patient safety and quality health care, very few admit their faults at the occurrence of errors that could jeopardize the health of many individuals. “Medication errors represent the largest single cause of errors in the hospital setting, accounting for more than 7,000 deaths annually- more than the number of deaths resulting from workplace injuries.” (Katheen & Mason, 2005). The loss of these lives hold health-care providers and current standards accountable while many other untraceable errors resulting in injuries and disabilities go unnoticed.

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

Medical errors in the United States has been an intense topic of interest for politicians, researchers, and the general public alike for a number of years now. Concern about medical errors grew in the US following the release of “To ERR is Human: Building a safer Health System” report issued by the Institute of Medicine (IOM). This apprehension most noticeably started during the Clinton administration; IOM released their groundbreaking report in 1999 during the Clinton administration. Results shed light on the reality of diagnostic errors and raised awareness to the public. The alarm created by IOM catapulted the matter to President Bill Clinton. According to Janet Brooks (2009) (a Canadian journalist who has completed

In the United States, state laws dictate the abilities and skills medical professional would need to perform in a medical professional’s scope of practice and sets the legal boundaries in which they can work within. Due to an increasing influx of patient care that is needed due to the Affordable Care Act, the scope of practice boundaries are being crossed, which in turn has turned many legislative heads but not in a positive light. Since the issues in medical errors are being brought to the fore front it has become controversial and now legislature is asking the states to look into restructuring the scope of practices in all areas the medical industry. Without restructuring patient care will continue to be poor or inadequate and litigation will continue to rise due to poor patient care, incorrect testing, ineffective specimen collection, missed diagnosis, and poor supervision and communication. Death related cases due to medical errors are the 5th largest in the United States which makes it the 5th leading cause of death in the United States. Many medical errors are actually billed and paid for by insurance companies and the physician receives payment for the errors. The United States spends billions on litigation per year and therefore restructuring the medical industry could save the United States millions of dollars per year and make for a safer over all environment for everyone.

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).

Making a mistake is part of human character regardless of a person’s career. While it is almost probable that one will make mistakes in their place of work, it is the act of taking responsibility for these mistakes that really counts. When one makes an error occurs in the course of writing a drug prescription to a patient, he or she needs to consider the ethical and legal implications of this act on the laws, for instance in Texas. One needs to carefully consider what the law says about the resulting consequences of disclosure and non-disclosure of the said error. Furthermore, one should consider how the mistake will affect one’s career as a nurse in the State, the health of the patient and how the medical facility will also be affected. Many patients have suffered due to medical errors and never get to know of such, this is due to the fear by the health professionals that they might face a lawsuit if they admitted to these errors.