Imagine you were working at a hospital in the radiology department where the hospital is understaffed and a reducing budget. Which sometimes the department gets chaotic. Upon reviewing previous examinations, you discover an error that involves two patients. After identifying the problem, resulting in a patient who was to receive a chest procedure, but instead, the technologist performed an abdominal procedure that was ordered for a different patient. When this error was discovered it was clear that both patients were not in any harm during this case. The real harm, in this case, is the technologist who made the error and the department head who authorized the management shift. When deciding an alternative solution one of the easiest options in this situation would be to stay uncommunicative, but the problem still stands and if the department head and technologist don't say anything there would be dire consequences of losing their job. Also, the department head and the technologist could fill out an incident report and keep it between the technologist, and the department head since both patients were not in any harm. Another approach would be to request a meeting with the patients, department heads, the physicians, and the radiologist to fully discuss the situations in detail of the mistake. …show more content…
results in certain rights of the patient while at the same protecting the technologist and the department head from possible criticism. The right thing to do is to fill out an incident report informing the medical center administration of the instanced. This will prompt beneficial management changes so this kind of error never happens
The patient was located on the fifth floor and as I was bringing them down the elevator, there was a family member of a patient in the elevator. Under HIPAA regulations, I cannot allow others to view the patient confidential information that I had in my hand. As we got to our stop I told the patient to follow me through the mechanical doors. I told the patient to wait in cubical 2 and that the nurse will be with then in a few moments. In addition, I will be getting them a warm blanket once I come back. I headed to leave the binder at the receptionist desk in the OR where they had another patient pick-up waiting for me. Before I left, I went to get the patient a warm blanket from the storage area that had temperature control. I gave it to the patient and left. Ronnie saw me and asked me if I did the patient pick-up alone, I said yes and he was surprised. Usually he needed to teach others in order to know what exactly they had to do. The only reason why I knew that I had to do everything that I did was because Ronnie told me everything verbally. He did not have to show me what to
University Hospital is a well known hospital with a level 1 trauma treatment center for the tri-county area of a northwestern state, the hospital enjoys the fact they are known for their promising reputation among healthcare professionals and the public they serve. Jan Adams is an OR supervisor that has been working there for ten years, as a professional she makes surgeons follow protocol as required and enjoys working with trauma patients. One Friday night, which is the busiest day of the week for the trauma department; the unit was notified that a helicopter was on its way with a 42 year old man who had been in a car accident. Shortly after the patient arrived to the trauma center, the resident and other medical staff noted that he was in very bad physical conditions, needed immediate surgery or otherwise he was going to die. The issue was that the on call surgeon had to be present during the surgery and had not yet arrived, but regardless of the matter and protocol they proceeded with medically treating the patient immediately. The concern is that in doing so they violated medical procedures and put the patients safety at risk, this lead to a long list of ethical issues for example, patient well-being, impaired healthcare professional, adherence to professional codes of ethical conduct, adherence to the organization’s mission statement, ethical standards, and values statements, management’s role and responsibility, failure
If you create a mistake while exposing radiographs on a patient, never say “Oops.” Patients need reassurance that the treatment they are receiving is done in a professional, correct manner. Just continue on with their radiographic treatment.
Interventional Radiology was running slow today during clinical. It first started off by the nurses explaining what the day was going to consist of. After that they explained, how to get everything ready to start the day. We did not start procedures until around 0845. First patient was in for a cat scan, an I.V. was placed. The first nurse was not the best person to explain a procedure, therefore I just watched as she did the I.V. The second procedure was another cat scan, and I.V. placed too. This nurse was more willing to explain as she did the procedure. However she did have a harder time doing the I.V. because she was not having blood return. Another nurse helped her but she also had trouble getting the I.V. placed. Later after that patient, another patient was in, but he was going to be taken to catheterization lab. I did not get a chance to go with him because another patient was going to have permanent catheter insertion. I got ready to see the permanent catheter insertion, and the nurse explain what they were going to do. However I did not get to see the whole procedure because in the middle of the procedure I felt dizzy, and dizzy. Finally I got to see a nephrostomy exchange tube. The patient it’s a regular patient that
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.
As with all emergency situations we attend our number one priority is safety and being aware of any potential danger on scene. Responsibility for safety is everybody’s individual duty and covers myself, my colleagues, the patient, relatives and any other agencies attending the scene. The Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) states I should take reasonable care for my own health and safety and also for others who may be affected by my actions or omissions. At this particular incident everything was safe.
All identified risks should be reported to the nurse or the line manager on duty so it can be corrected/amended and a new risk assessment can be put in place. This also should be documented appropriately.
Hi Caroline. I found your paragraph about radiology to be interesting and very informative. I like how you mention what radiologists are responsible for and what they perform besides taking X-Rays. You talk about the different imaging resources such as ultrasounds, CT scans, nuclear medicine, tomography, and MRIs. The various duties radiologists perform in diagnosing and treating patients are needed to keep the patient informed on their progress and any update that may be present. I originally was going to start the radiology program here at Brookdale and I still find it to be an important area of medical study. I find it's a very critical part of the medical field and I did not realize how far you can study radiology and how you can
As the administrator of the Radiology Department, I am not only in charge of managing day-to-day operations, but also have to develop the capital budget. Upon developing the capital budget, it was decided that the budget for the fiscal year would be one million dollars. As well as developing the budget, the task falls upon me to decide where the money will be allocated. Within an organization there are several budgets that arise such as, an expense budget, a revenue budget, and the one at hand, the capital budget. Unlike other budgets, the capital budget is one where one has to “select long-term assets, whose useful life is greater than one year… items typically include…routine capital equipment.” (Pg205). Two requests were submitted from the Mammography department, as well as the MRI department. Being placed in charge of making this decision, I now face the challenge of having to decide which departments request will be approved. Approving both requests would exceed the capital budget, due to the fact that both requests individually cost eight hundred thousand dollars. In order to come to a decision, as an administrator it is critical that I
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
Even if no one found out about this mistake, eventually it could happen again if you don’t take the necessary steps to correct your mistake, and this time it could be deadly for your patient.
Smith to perform surgery of course risk for infection spread by her to the patient. The doctor has obvious symptoms of a severe respiratory illness: coughing, sneezing and copious nasal secretions and gulping a third cough medicine with no measurement. If she decides to perform surgery despite having infectious diseases, she risks infecting their patients or her coworkers. Not only that, the doctor may not be able to perform the best under impairment of cough medicine side effects. As with the coworkers, they are in danger of not fulfilling their responsibility to report unsafe practice. I understand reporting a coworker for unsafe practice is not easy, especially in this case a surgeon. However, I think it is crucial for nurses (in everyday life) to not just acknowledging unsafe decisions or practice, but also stop it under our nursing judgement. Not only for the sake of safety of our patients, but also protecting our license, doctor’s license, and the
Other actions that I would take is to discuss the patient scenario with the patient care committee, Pozgar states, “ The patient care committee reviews the quality of patient care rendered in the organization and makes recommendations for improvement of such care” (P.146). The
Disclosing medical errors is considered necessary by patients and practitioners. They are advised to disclose in the form of an apology when necessary and appropriate. When a medical error causes damage to the patient, it seen as not acceptable because a patient goes for treatment in order to get better not to get worse therefore it calls for the situation to be addressed. When a medical error is not disclosed, the fellow peers who have witnessed the error must decide whether they should remain silent and keep the error to themselves or reveal the error to the higher up, although it would be in good faith to report the medical error to a higher up, unless it has caused harm or long-term damage to the patient. (Youngson. p. 69) There are many hospitals that the practitioners keep the errors made to themselves and do not disclose the medical errors to the families of patients or the patients themselves. Medical errors become a topic of conversation if the family of a patient or the patient themselves become aware about the error. Medical errors are something that should be disclosed in a good faith manner
Radiology is a very important step in the process of diagnosis in the health care field. If it were not for x-rays, doctors would not even know where to begin. The radiology department is the eye of medicine. There are special modalities one can go into after getting a degree in radiology. With that being said, I’m going to elaborate on the importance of radiology in the steps of diagnosing and treating a patient. The three modalities I would like to talk about are Mammography, Fluoroscopy, and Interventional Radiography.