True or false? A trip to the doctor’s is guaranteed to make you feel better.
The answer is false, unfortunately, as all-too-common issues like medical errors can send patients home feeling worse than when they entered – or, make them unable to leave at all.
Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, and refer to a range of mistakes made in health care settings including incorrect diagnosis, incorrect dispensing of medications and problems in surgery.
Diagnostic errors
Diagnostic errors refer to mistakes made when diagnosing a patient’s condition or ailment. This can include an incorrect diagnosis, such as a doctor mistaking the patient’s condition for something it is not, or a missed diagnosis, such as a doctor neglecting or ignoring signs of a problem.
“While all medical errors are concerning, diagnostic errors stand out as particularly alarming due to their high prevalence and severe consequences,” says John Fitch, an Ohio-based personal injury lawyer and founder of The Fitch Law Firm, which recently led and invested in an analysis on medical errors in the U.S. health care system.
The analysis found that diagnostic errors are responsible for injuries in approximately 3.9 million patients each year. It also found that 7% of Americans who are misdiagnosed each year – about 12 million total – go on to experience a permanent injury or death.
According to report’s findings, diagnostic errors may result from:
- Rushed consultations
- Inadequate testing
- Miscommunication among medical teams
Medication errors
Medication errors refer to mistakes in the prescription medication process. Some examples of medication errors include:
- Your doctor writes you an incorrect prescription, such as writing down the wrong medication or the wrong dose.
- Your doctor writes you a correct prescription, but puts another patient’s name on it – or vice versa.
- Your pharmacist dispenses you an incorrect prescription.
- Your pharmacist dispenses you another patient’s prescription.
Medication errors are common – according to The Fitch Law Firm’s report, over 100,000 medication errors occur each year – and can have lethal consequences.
“Medication errors can be particularly worrisome because they can go unnoticed until it is too late,” Fitch says. “A single mistake in dosage or drug interaction can result in an overdose, allergic reaction, organ failure and even fatalities in some cases.”
Surgical errors
Surgical errors are medical errors that occur during a surgery. Some types of surgical errors include:
- Operating on the wrong patient
- Leaving foreign objects, such as surgery tools, inside the body after a surgery
- Wrong site surgical errors, which are when a surgeon operates on an incorrect body part during the procedure
More than 4,000 surgical errors occur annually in the U.S., according to The Fitch Law Firm’s analysis.
Device and equipment errors
Device and equipment errors can include design flaws or malfunctioning of a medical device or tool, as well as problems that ensue from mishandling the device or user errors. For devices that are implanted into the body, such as pacemakers or defibrillators, or inserted into the body, such as catheters or feeding tubes, improper placement can also result in a medical error.
Hospital-acquired infections
Hospital-acquired infections, also known as nosocomial infections, refer to infections acquired during a patient’s hospital stay. Hospital-acquired infections have a variety of causes including:
- Poor hand hygiene of hospital staff
- Improper placement of devices for patients
- Improper wound care
- Lack of antibiotic stewardship
Studies on nosocomial infections have associated these with risks of mortality and morbidity among patients, as well as an increased financial burden on health care systems. Researchers have also described hospital-acquired infections as a “failure of the system.”
Vulnerable patients can be prone to falling in hospital settings, particularly if they are above the age of 65 or dealing with side effects of an injury or surgery. While hospital workers can help prevent falls in hospitals, some workers are undertrained and some settings are understaffed, which can increase the chances for falls.
Communication errors
Communication errors can include mistakes in written or spoken communications among medical professionals or with their patients. Information that has been communicated incorrectly is a medical error, as is information that has been left out and not passed on to necessary recipients.
How to Prevent Medical Errors
Medical errors are more than just mistakes. They can be life-altering – or ending – tragedies. And while some medical errors can be blamed on the incompetent actions of a single doctor, medical errors as a whole have more systemic influences.
That being said, medical errors are unlikely to go away by firing one bad surgeon or lazy pharmacist. Change will require group action from many medical departments and outside sources of health care funding, like the U.S. government.
Addressing checks and balances in the medical workflow
Multi-step medical processes, such as ensuring that multiple doctors and computer systems verify a procedure or medication’s accuracy, can be essential safeguards in reducing the occurrence of medical errors.
Dr. Kanwar Kelley, a board-certified otolaryngologist and cofounder and CEO of Side Health, says that most medical errors – regardless if they are diagnostic errors, medication errors or surgical errors – can be linked to issues in medical processes or workflows.
Establishing safeguards for error prevention
One well-known model for preventing medical errors is the Swiss cheese model, which helps to establish multiple layers of safeguards to stop mistakes from slipping through the cracks – or cheese holes – of the health care system.
Kelley explains that the Swiss cheese model operates around the idea that, “if you have 100 pieces of Swiss cheese, each one of those pieces may have its own individual four or five holes. If you start stacking piece on top of piece on top of piece, you’re going to end up with an impermeable barrier.”