The Current Issue of Medical Mistakes

As it has been asked many times, should we talk about medical mistakes? Throughout the years there has been multiple medical mistakes leading to long recoveries and for some even death. The fact that a medical physician has made a mistake is something that no one wants to hear about. This makes families feel let down and betrayed leaving the physician, in some cases, feeling down and depressed and others find themselves scared to talk about what they have done. As humans we make mistakes, that is part of what makes us human, but also as humans we need to talk about the mistakes that we make and the reasons why they happened. In early childhood everyone would say “It is okay, we can learn from our mistakes.” Although childhood goes away some of the lessons should stay with us no matter what age. Taking a second to look back at the mistake and think about why they happened is very important. Medical physicians should talk about the mistakes that they make because it could save someone else from making the same mistake in the future.

Medical errors are now the third leading cause of death in the United States says Ariana Eunjung Cha. “based on one study, estimated deaths because of medical errors as high as 98,000 a year.” “His calculation of 251,000 deaths equates to nearly 700 deaths a day — about 9.5 percent of all deaths annually in the United States.” Being a medical physician means going into work at a drop of a dime to feel the needs of patients who are sick or hurting. After a while of constantly working a physician’s sleep schedule might no longer be a schedule causing sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is one of the many reasons there are medical mistakes. In one of Camille Perils articles she states that “Sleep plays a critical role in thinking and learning. Lack of sleep hurts these cognitive processes in many ways. First, it impairs attention, alertness, concentration,

As it has been asked many times, should we talk about medical mistakes? Throughout the years there has been multiple medical mistakes leading to long recoveries and for some even death. The fact that a medical physician has made a mistake is something that no one wants to hear about. This makes families feel let down and betrayed leaving the physician, in some cases, feeling down and depressed and others find themselves scared to talk about what they have done. As humans we make mistakes, that is part of what makes us human, but also as humans we need to talk about the mistakes that we make and the reasons why they happened. In early childhood everyone would say “It is okay, we can learn from our mistakes.” Although childhood goes away some of the lessons should stay with us no matter what age. Taking a second to look back at the mistake and think about why they happened is very important. Medical physicians should talk about the mistakes that they make because it could save someone else from making the same mistake in the future.

Medical errors are now the third leading cause of death in the United States says Ariana Eunjung Cha. “based on one study, estimated deaths because of medical errors as high as 98,000 a year.” “His calculation of 251,000 deaths equates to nearly 700 deaths a day — about 9.5 percent of all deaths annually in the United States.” Being a medical physician means going into work at a drop of a dime to feel the needs of patients who are sick or hurting. After a while of constantly working a physician’s sleep schedule might no longer be a schedule causing sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is one of the many reasons there are medical mistakes. In one of Camille Perils articles she states that “Sleep plays a critical role in thinking and learning. Lack of sleep hurts these cognitive processes in many ways. First, it impairs attention, alertness, concentration, reasoning, and problem solving. This makes it more difficult to learn efficiently.” Without sleep it is nearly impossible to fully focus on what is important leaving physicians at high risk to make mistakes. Other know causes of medical mistakes include giving the wrong dosage and simply just not asking questing’s and making sure the information gathered is correct. In fact, The Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research states that “The most common types of reported errors were wrong dosage and infusion rate. The most common causes were using abbreviations instead of full names of drugs and similar names of drugs.” Sometimes the cause of this could be the medical physician having sloppy writing making it hard to read the dosage or drug needed. If this occurs the proper thing to do is ask questions instead of assuming the answer. There are some drug dosage mistakes that do not end up causing a problem but those are the lucky mistakes, others can include an allergic reaction causing hives or a constricted air way, severe illnesses, or even death. In other situations, it could even be the patients’ fault for a medical mistake. Some patients are unable to explain the way they are feeling or have a hard way of explaining it. Take babies for example, all they know how to do for communication is to cry. Although crying lets the parents know something is wrong it makes it quite hard to figure out the exact problem. With this delay of information, a high fever opens up the possibilities for many illnesses that could take days of testing to figure out. By that time a fever could turn into extreme illness. Medical physicians might call this a mistake that is not their fault but a family member of this child could beg to differ. For some mistakes the reasons are sometimes not even noticed. A medical physician could be wide awake feeling healthier than ever, it just so happens that on a particular day the office is extremely busy needing the physician’s attention everywhere he or she looks. Having so many things that need to get done can cause a ton of stress leading to a fogged memory. Everything starts running together making it possible to make mistakes without even realizing it. Many jobs have stress involved nearly every day but for a medical physician too much stress could be life threatening to some patients.

Making a mistake in the medical field not only is hard on the patients and their families, but also on the physician. They understand the trouble they have put the patient through and sometimes it changes them forever. Physicians of all ages from all specialties end up having some kind of negative feedback to the mistakes they have made. Some causing depression, disappointment in themselves, or a strong guilt that hides inside them. For others, a fear can build up. This fear can become so strong that the medical physician never comes forward due to the fear of losing his or her job. In other cases, the physician may just give up on his or her job and never give it a second chance. A study in Pak J Med Scis’ article states that “All 128(100%) residents who encountered an error reported experiencing some negative emotions as a result of their error. Most 89(70%) experienced sorrows, 88(69%) guilt, 85(66%) emotional distress and 51(40%) inadequacy”

The same article states that “Medical errors committed by residents have inadequate disclosure to senior physicians and result in negative emotions but there was positive change in their behavior, which resulted in improvement in their future training and patient care.” The negative feedbacks of some mistakes can be difficult to come by but some of these side effect can cause physicians to work harder to prevent more mistakes form happening. Pak J Med Sci says “Often it is difficult to recognize one’s mistake, but it is necessary to face the situation and try to learn from it so that future errors can be prevented. Identifying the risk factors for medical errors is crucial first step towards its prevention and is important goal of quality care assurance.” Medical physicians see the mistakes they have made and they want to help these mistakes to never happen again. Other than working really hard to make sure that they do not make the mistakes again they could talk to other coworkers or farther than that they could talk to many other physicians to help fight these mistakes from happening. Not only could this help the medical physician to come to piece with the mistake he or she has made, but also help insure other people in the medical profession is aware of the mistakes that are able to happen but how they can be easily prevented.

Families of patients that have had a doctor that made a mistake during their medical visits might not understand the role that the doctor plays. Being on the outside of the situation means the patient and family members cannot fully see the stress and pressure the medical physician had been through that day. Therefor families will put down the physician due to their own dreadful emotions. They see medical physicians to be perfect at their job because of all the schooling they have been through quickly forgetting that doctors are humans just like everyone else. Everyone makes mistakes and no one, not even doctors, are perfect. Because patients and families do not understand the hard work and stress that medical physicians go through everyday they misjudge the situations forcing out the anger on the physicians. Although no one wants to hear about the mistakes that doctors have made, information about the mistake could help families understand the background of what happened. Understanding what the cause was could help patients’ families find peace with the situation, or at least help things not be so traumatic.

Throughout the years people in the medical field have learned so much that was unable to be known in the past. With all the new technology humans are able to better understand the body and the well being of the body. At the beginning of doctors and the medical profession there was very little to fall back on leaving patients and doctors questioning the state of wellness that now is so easy to figure out. All this new information started by making a false accusation, now known as a mistake, by the doctor. With these mistakes medical physicians started looking for solutions and talking about all the problems they had had and what they could do to fix them. Talking about any new medical information or even talking about the rare cases that have happened in the past can give detailed information that helps medical physicians learn more about the job that they perform every day. A common mistake made by many medical physicians can be looked at and talked about with hopes that some technology can be created to ensure the mistake does not keep happening. With a little bit of digging problems can be salved that once upon a time seemed like a mistake that just happened to be overlooked.

Medical mistakes happen every day and although it is sometimes hard to prevent them talking about them could help in many ways. Talking about the mistakes that medical physicians have made in the past can help mistakes be prevented in the long run. Medical physicians need to feel like a mistake can help better the future instead of shutting them down with depression and fear. They need to feel free to talk about the problem’s they have had and the struggles they have faced. Although medical mistakes are something that no one wants to hear about, it is something that needs to be talked about. Opening up about these mistakes might be hard for everyone including the patient’s families but knowing these mistakes could help someone in the future could make all the difference. Becoming aware of the problem’s doctors face and the reasons why these mistakes happened is the key to figuring out what can be done to help prevent them from happening. Keep the human quality and add the lesions learned as a child, this is the time to talk about medical mistakes.

References

1. Peri, Camille. “10 Things to Hate About Sleep Loss.” WebMD, WebMD, www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/10-results-sleep-loss#1.
2. Cha, Ariana Eunjung. “Researchers: Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in United States.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 3 May 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/03/researchers-medical-errors-now-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-united-states/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7388a1a2f9d7.
3. Cheragi, Mohammad Ali, et al. Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research, Medknow Publications & Meida Pvt Ltd, 2013, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3748543/.
4. Bari, Attia, et al. Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, Professional Medical Publications, 2016, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4928391/.