No amount of medical care in the world can improve the health and quality of a patient's life if the approach to care or the environment isn't safe.
As basic as learning to look both ways before crossing the street, or setting your scissors down before you break into a run, are the tenets of keeping infections at bay, double checking drugs before they are administered, even removing or operating on the right body parts.
The National Quality Forum in 2006 listed 28 of these medical errors and called them "never events." They include surgical and device errors, plus drug errors, care errors, environmental errors and criminal events. Errors resulting from nosocomial (hospital acquired) infections are not on the list.
The Institute of Medicine in 1999 reported the results of two patient safety studies which showed that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of medical errors and misdiagnosis, resulting from patient safety problems.
Among the errors cited:
- Hospital and community acquired infections:
Hospital patients may develop infections making their illnesses and treatment more difficult. Those with compromised immune systems, such as those with an open wound from injury or surgery, those who require catheters for drainage or drug delivery, or the elderly whose systems aren't as strong as they used to be, are most at risk.
Some infections are called "superbugs" because they have evolved beyond the ability to be killed (eradicated) by existing antibiotics.
- Drug errors: From problems interpreting a doctor's handwriting on a prescription, to mistakes in their translation at the pharmacy, to administration problems with dosage, time frames or route of administration, to too many similar and confusing drug names, drug errors account for thousands of deaths per year.
- Surgical errors: Wrong site surgeries, or patient misidentification comprise the bulk of surgical errors. Some surgeries don't work as well as the surgeon or patient would like, but that's not the same as one that goes awry, causing an error. Surgeries conducted with heat sources for tasks like cauterizing may also result in fires.
Other sources of patient safety problems result in falls, providers who aren't well rested, and others.
These patient safety violations can take place in any healthcare setting from doctor's offices, hospitals, surgical centers, to long-term care facilities and pathology labs.
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