Now that we have examined numbers in the aspect of the big picture, it is important to narrow it down to gain some perspective and to also experimental see if we can determine if the previous numbers could indeed be credible or not. I discovered an article dealing with deaths per year due to miscommunication based strictly from hospitals that are affiliated with Harvard University. In this study, 23,658 malpractice cases from 2009 to 2013 were examined and found that 7,000 cases involved communication failure between medical staff or doctor and patient. Within these cases it was determined that 1,744 deaths per year occurred due to communication related issues. This equates to approximately 30% of cases having communication failure that …show more content…
Per the Harvard Gazette, there are exactly 17 Harvard affiliated hospitals located in the United States, and per the American Hospital Association there are 5,564 total hospitals in the United States. Since 1,744 deaths per year were reported as the total of all the hospitals affiliated with Harvard I thought we could experimentally find the mean of how many deaths are associated with each Harvard affiliated hospital than take the mean found and infer that number to the total number of hospitals in the United States. By multiplying the mean of the Harvard hospitals by the total number of hospitals in the United States, we can obtain a number (very crude but for the purposes of this paper I believe it’s somewhat interesting). Dividing 1,744 by 17 we get 102, then 5,564 multiplied by 102 we get 567,528. This number is way beyond the highest number reported in this paper thus far (the highest being 440,000), which is actually rather interesting. Now, before you dismiss this paper due to the fact that these numbers don’t add up, this was a very crude experiment that is in no way close to an accurate description of using the methods of inferential statistics and
Awareness should be built among the doctors and nurses on the risks of medical errors owing to miscommunications. This can be done by periodically doing policy review sessions on patient safety.
“Errors in communication give rise to substantial clinical morbidity and mortality (Riesenberg, Leitzsch, & Cunningham, 2010).” As a result, the Joint Commission has identified effective communication as one of its National Patient Safety Goals (Dunsford, 2009).
Investigating problems on both the doctors and patients side during the interaction at any medical appointment is key when interpreting statistics that relate to this matter. These aspects will be further explored later in this paper. The general consensus from many articles and studies indicate that miscommunication is a massive problem that impacts many individuals who die each year from miscommunication. Furthermore, each article shows a different perspective on where this error comes from and where, both doctor and patient, go wrong and what they can both do to improve the communication between them. Another aspect that must also be incorporated into this argument is that communication is not all verbal and that non-verbal communication can be just as effective or ineffective when it comes to dealing with other medical personnel or patients. The 7% rule coined by Albert Mehrabian in his book “Silent Messages” states that “93% of communication is non-verbal, with 55% being body language and 38% being tone of voice; leaving only 7% of communication being verbal.” (“Silent Messages” Albert Mehrabian), and that ineffective or bad non-verbal communication can be just as detrimental during an interaction as verbal communication. Unfortunately, for doctors, the precision of the execution in this small 7% of communication is crucial when explaining challenging
Interdepartmental communication and medical errors have both been proven as causes of harm to patients in health care settings. When there are gaps in communications between nurses changing shifts or patient transitions from one department to another, medical errors can occur and cause harm to patients. Even though there has been improvement in recognition of these problems and actions taken to reduce communication gaps and medical errors, there still needs to be more work, especially in individual facilities.
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
As mentioned by Imhof & Kaskie (2008), communication is very important in the health care organizations that have complex organizational structures. Most of the employees are not able to communicate clearly and this can lead to conflicts which block the employees from providing the quality care the patients need.
Effective communication is one of the utmost characteristics of a high-quality health care model that responds to the existing needs of the general population. However, communication may sometimes be taken for granted and therefore fail to relay important information between health care providers within the interprofessional team. In today’s health care setting, communication is particularly challenging due to the limited time constrain in the workplace. In spite of the utilization of existing charts and documentation, errors are made. In this paper, a real life clinical scenario is discussed which involved a breakdown of
On many occasions, I have seen situations in which effective communication involving the professional healthcare team played a vital role in the positive outcome of patient care. On the other hand, there have been miscommunication between the healthcare team resulting in situations that could have been tragic to the patient.
I believe that communication is the main reason problems occur in health care. It is crucial that the health care team works together as a team and communicates any issues or concerns throughout the process of patient care. No matter how many processes are put into place or how many checklists are followed, mistakes are going to be made unless proper communication occurs. Unfortunately, these mistakes are usually at the cost of safe patient care. According to Edwards (2008), “every
According to Barry (2014), the Joint Commission has acknowledged the severity of complications associated with communication mistakes, for as much as 70% of adverse medical events, 75% of which lead to patient death, are a result of communication breakdowns. Barry (2014) also states that instances of miscommunication cause over two-thirds of adverse effects among patients. As noted by Malekzadeh, Mazluom, Etezadi, and Alireza (2013), as much as 69% of medical errors are preventable in nature and the fact that these issues still plague the field of healthcare in the 21st century is quite perplexing. Therefore, it is the goal of this charter to identify means and ways in which hand-off discrepancies may be minimized and further eliminated, by implementing a tool that will drastically decrease the percentage of handoff errors resulting from a breakdown of communication.
The Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) (1999) report To Err is Human revealed the United States healthcare system to be a rather unsafe environment for patients estimating that as many as 96,000 patients died or were seriously injured due to preventable medical errors. Incidentally, studies conducted as recently as 2011 have suggested that the actual rate of preventable medical error occurrence may be three times the IOM’s initial estimation (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2012). Statistics this extreme cannot be attributed to the mistakes or substandard practices of individual healthcare providers alone and thus it is imperative that healthcare organizations begin to seek out solutions at the system’s level (Geary, 2014). Therefore, it
In my current job I have to communicate with my doctor, the other assistant, the owner, our patients, insurance companies, and attorneys offices. With the doctor I work for I have no issues with communication. We are able to speak freely and not hurt each others feelings about what we may need to say. Considering it is a small practice, it takes all of us working as a team to get all of the work finished. This makes it easier for me and the doctor to work together and communicate, knowing that we have to rely on each other to get tasks done each day on a priority basis. The only communication barrier that I may have with the doctor is when we are having issues agreeing on how certain things should be coded under the new ICD-10 diagnosis codes
Communication is the leading factor in heath care errors (book). (Treas & Wilkinson Book p463) defines communication as “a dynamic, reciprocal process of sending and receiving messages. The messages may be verbal, non-verbal,
However, if effective communication among the team is not achieved, errors may occur. It is the major disadvantages of the MDT. The National Patient Safety Agency (2007) communication difficulties identified as a main factor influencing patient outcomes.
Mercedee DoucetteHS115-ACMay 14, 2018Error of Communication, Commission and OmissionToday I am going to be telling you about three common medical errors. These three medical errors are; Error of Communication, Error of Commission and Errors of Omission. I am going to define these three errors. I will also give you an example with each one of them as well. I will be listing the websites I get my information from at the end of this paper.First, I will be giving you the meaning of; error of communication. Error of Communication means; misunderstanding through email, body language, phone, listening, verbal. This can be one of the biggest errors in current situations. For an example; If a medical assistant was told to not set up a room before the