By: Barrie Quappé RN, BSN – Consultant/Director:
You start with a fever, some generalized aches and pains and the next thing you know you are being wheeled in for a surgery. Sound like a bad movie script? Maybe, but the truth is the latest research into medical errors is downright scary.
For the Cayman Islands, while we have a Public Health Department, statistics on medical error is not something that is put into the public arena to my knowledge. In other words, we don’t know how well or how bad our medical providers are doing in Cayman.
In the United States, the Washington Post cites BMJ on recent research findings:
“Their analysis, published in the BMJ on Tuesday, shows that “medical errors” in hospitals and other health-care facilities are incredibly common and may now be the third-leading cause of death in the United States — claiming 251,000 lives every year, more than respiratory disease, accidents, stroke and Alzheimer’s.” (Cha, 2016)
Regarding practitioner’s addressing these errors the findings is stark:
“Although all providers extol patient safety and highlight the various safety committees and protocols they have in place, few provide the public with specifics on actual cases of harm due to mistakes. Moreover, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t require reporting of errors in the data it collects about deaths through billing codes, making it hard to see what’s going on at the national level.” (Cha, 2016)
The literature is rife with errors but short on prevention. Taking a page from the aviation industry, where pilots use checklists do a pre-flight check, healthcare is now employing checklists in various settings and procedure specific.
If your health care facility is not using these, you may be at a higher risk for medical error. Clay-Williams and Colligan note that:
“In healthcare, we need to get back to the basics with checklists and reserve the tool for processes that are simple, easy to follow, standardized and (perhaps) time critical.” (Clay-Williams and Colligan, 2015)
These authors also acknowledge that the level of complexity in medicine is not always conducive to checklists and that practitioners should guard against a reliance on them but with proper training, the can be a great prevention tool to reduce errors. The World Health Organization and the Joint Commission have both issued checklists and you may wish to utilize those in your practice.
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Relevant Links:
- Anonymous (2016) The Joint Commission Big Book of Checklists, Joint Commission [Online] Available from: http://info.jcrinc.com/rs/494-MTZ-066/images/POINT-OF-CARE30.pdf
- Cha, A.E. (2016) ‘Researchers: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States’, The Washington Post [Online] Available from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/03/researchers-medical-errors-now-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-united-states/
- Clay-Williams, R. & Colligan, L. (2015), ‘Back to basics: checklists in aviation and healthcare’, BMJ Quality & Safety [Online] Available from: http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/24/7/428.full