Mistakes in the Medical Field

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Recommended: Errors in the health care system

It’s very difficult to blame someone when mistakes occur in an environment in which we hope learning and improvement will take place. But eventually someone has to take blame for the mistake. Errors can occur anywhere but when it comes to the healthcare field there are more possibilities.It would include acute care, ambulatory care, outpatient clinics, pharmacies, and patient homes. Many people assume that medical errors involve only wrong medications administered or the wrong surgery performed (Dovey, Kuzel, Phillips, and Woolf, 2004). However, there are many other types of errors such as wrong diagnosis, equipment failure; sometimes patients are given the wrong blood (Dovey, Kuzel, Phillips, and Woolf, 2004). As much as the healthcare employees try to prevent medical errors, they still can happen. It is necessary to recognize the medical error in order to provide proper care to the patient, report the error and then take an action to prevent the error from happening again (Dovey, Kuzel, Phillips, and Woolf, 2004).
The sentinel events are the worst. They involve death, psychological injury, or the "risk thereof." "Risk thereof" means that although death or serious injury may not have happened it could have happened (Dovey, Kuzel, Phillips, and Woolf, 2004). An idea came up of not paying the hospitals or facilities if the patients are being charge for their mistakes. “The idea of not paying for errors was spawned by the quality improvement movement that has been sweeping through healthcare since 1999, when the institutes of medicine issued its seminal report saying as many as 98,000 U.S died annually because of medical errors” (Carpenter, 2008) (p.14). Perhaps maybe this can fix the medical error problem we are having.
Preven...

... middle of paper ...

...selves and often suffer long-term guilt.

Works Cited

Carpenter, D. (2008). Never Land Medicare Declares “No Pay for Preventable Errors”. http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=8&sid=f99326c5-50b6-4b3c-a20a-31ffaf7233b9%40sessionmgr4001&hid=4214.
Dovey, S., Kuzel, A., Phillips, R. Woolf, S. (2004). A String of Mistakes: The importance of Cascades Analysis in Describing, Counting, and Preventing Medical Errors. Annals of Family Medicine, v.2 (4). doi: 10.1370/afm.126.
Ferrer, J., Koepke, C., Miranda, D., Swift, E. (2001). Preventing Medical Errors. Health Care Financing Review, v.23(1) http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=f99326c5-50b6-4b3c-a20a-31ffaf7233b9%40sessionmgr4001&vid=5&hid=4214.
Moridani, M., Scott, T. (2012). Lookalike, Soundalike Tests: Preventing Serious Medical Errors. Letters to the Editor, v.28. doi:10.5858/arpa.

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