mistakes

Last week Dr. Anna Pou and two nurses were arrested in connection with the deaths of patients at Memorial Medical Center during Hurricane Katrina. Since then the arrests have drawn a public outcry from many in the medical community who feel the three health workers are victims of a witch hunt that seeks to blame them for other's mistakes. Pou's supporters argue that, despite terrible …

Mistakes happen, but healthcare providers are always striving to limit the damage medical slip-ups cause. There are a number of ways to prevent problems, but rather than pouring money into technology and expensive equipment, one hospital is focusing on improving communication skills to avoid problems. "Poor communication in medical practice is one of the most common causes of medical errors," said Richard M. Frankel, Ph.D., professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of …

Researchers at Johns Hopkins released a study that concludes requiring doctors and nurses to report medication errors and log them in a database improves care quality and decreases the chances that providers will make mistakes. The research, which appears in the June issue of the journal Quality & Safety in Healthcare, looked at mistakes at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. In the study, researchers found errors occur during every step of the medication process …

With some studies showing doctors misdiagnose 1 in 5 patients, critics want more effort to go into getting diagnoses right the first time. Is there a misdiagnosis crisis? That depends, of course, on who you ask. With doctors under more pressure than ever to treat patients as quickly as possible, some argue mistakes are inevitable. The New York Times takes a look at the issue and possible solutions, profiling Isabel Healthcare, a company that specializes in diagnosis …

Critics have argued for years that healthcare IT systems pose unusual risks. Many have wondered what happens if a programming mistake causes important patient data to get scrambled. That's exactly what appears to have transpired in the UK, where a bug in the NHS version of the iSoft iPM patient administration system appears to have created the potential for potentially serious clinical mistakes. Far from being an isolated issue, the problem appears to be fairly widespread, affecting …

Despite the fact that patient "handoffs" are common as patients move from doctor to doctor within the healthcare system, few clinicians have formal training in the finer points and possible pitfalls involved. A team led by Indiana School of Medicine professor Richard Frankel found that the safest form of transfer is a "face-to-face" meeting which, of course, rarely happens anymore. Frankel argues that handoffs represent a little noticed but real risk, posing the potential for serious …

Health officials in California revealed a second death of a patient at a Kaiser Permanente hospital involving a serious medical error. A 12 year old girl died at Santa Clara Medical Center after receiving a double dose of epinephrine. Last week, it was announced that a patient in San Jose died after being injected with the wrong chemotherapy drug. The hospitals said they will adopt new guidelines approved by the California intended to prevent such mistakes.

- see this article from The San Francisco Chronicle

A new journal article published this month becomes the latest to examine the potential pitfalls of IT in the healthcare system, examining a serious prescription error at New York Presbyterian. The authors reconstruct a series of mistakes affecting treatment of an elderly male patient experiencing kidney failure. Human error, poorly designed screens and a lack of warnings led to the mistake, which resulted in the patient receiving more than three times the maximum allowed dose of …

Congress passed legislation on Wednesday which would establish a national system for reporting medical errors. Critics of the health care system have argued for years that mistakes claim thousands of lives every year. One well-known estimate by the Institute of Medicine suggests that nearly 100,000 people die annually as a result of mistakes at hospitals. The law is supported by both the AMA and the AHA, and, as a consequence, it stops short of the mandatory reporting requirement that …

A new federally-funded study finds that hospitals with financial problems are more likely to commit medical errors than those which are more profitable. A team from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) compared error rates at 176 Florida hospitals with data on their overall financial well-being. The researchers found that errors are 12 percent more likely to occur at hospitals which are losing money. The study appears in this week's issue of the medical journal …