Medical Mistakes Research Paper

Medical Mistakes According to members of the Subcommittee of Primary Health and Aging, 1 trillion dollars are lost due to medical errors. According to a study done by the “Journal of Patient Safety”, over 400,000 people die each year due to these medical errors, making them the third-leading cause of death in the U.S.A. All these mistakes are preventable in some way or another. Physicians can prevent medical errors by double-checking for mistakes, using patient-specific identifiers, and verifying allergies and reactions. Physicians need to double-check for mistakes. Numerous studies have shown the ability of independent double checks to detect up to 95% of errors. In fact, based on a study done by the Institution for Safe Medication Practices, an error rate of 5% can be reduced to .25% by introducing an independent double-check process. The simplest way to conduct this process is to have one physician check for mistakes, and then another physician to check for the
An article found on www.oprah.com told the story of an astonishing mix-up in a hospital. A 67-year-old woman named Joan Morris was resting in her room after a brain aneurysm procedure when nurses took her into the catheterization lab. Mistaking her for a 77-year-old patient named Jane Morrison, who was scheduled to have a cardiac test, doctors proceeded to stop and start Joan Morris's heart several times. After an hour of doing so, the doctors realized their mistake. Luckily, Joan was not harmed. To prevent these types of mistakes, health-care workers should check each patient’s identity and match the correct patients with the correct care before that care is administered. The hospital should also have the information of one person one on paper, instead of having the information of two different patients on one paper. Another way to prevent medical mistakes is to verify all patient information before prescribing or giving medicine to the