A recent study conducted by Johns Hopkins University revealed that medical mistakes are the third leading cause of death in the United States. This surpasses diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and strokes.
Medical errors can occur in virtually any setting, from hospitals to clinics, surgery centers, and medical offices. Fortunately, there are also ways to prevent them from improving communications methods to using certain equipment, such as Isolation Carts for Hospitals. This article will explore some of the most common mistakes that happen in a healthcare environment.
Communications Breakdowns
Word not getting from one medical practitioner to another is a very common error in healthcare environments. Whether these problems are based on verbal or written communications, they can result in serious mistakes. These communications breakdowns can happen between nurses, nurses and doctors, and nurses and doctors and patients. Regardless of where in the communications chain they take place and between whom, errors happen, and only humans can take the necessary steps to correct them and ensure they won’t happen again. These types of problems can be avoided by making sure that communications are clarified between whomever messages are sent from and to.
Inadequate Information
Healthcare environments are full of busy people. Due to this, all sorts of different communications problems can take place. Sometimes, this results in inadequate information being relayed from one person to another, whether it is from nurse to nurse, doctor to nurse, or provider to patient. This can cause medical mistakes. In fact, this is a leading cause of medical mistakes. Just as is the case with most communications problems, fixing mistakes of this type requires good communications methods and follow-up procedures,\ that should be part of a continuing medical education program.
Human Problems
Humans make mistakes. It’s that simple. Unfortunately, human mistakes happen most frequently when policies, processes and standards of care are not followed. Examples of these kinds of errors are when disposal in isolation carts are not followed or when labeling is not done correctly. Human knowledge mistakes are also a common problem that can be corrected with proper training procedures. New employees of all sorts, whether nurses, doctors, pharmacists, and many others, are sources of these errors.
Patient Issues
Patient mistakes most often happen when issues arise with regards to insufficient patient education, failure to obtain consent, inadequate patient assessment, and when patient identification matters come to light. Fortunately, there are many products and other resources that can assist in making mistakes of this nature rare. Further, nothing can replace the human touch in patient interactions.
Inadequate Transfer of Knowledge
Closely related to human problems is inadequate transfer of knowledge, which is unsatisfactory or inconsistent training. Passing knowledge along from one person to another is critical in giving new employees or temporary employees the information they need to know how to do their jobs in a professional manner.
These are only a few of the many mistakes that can happen in the healthcare environment. There are legions more. Mistakes can happen virtually everywhere in the chain of providing healthcare. Fortunately, just as is the case with virtually every aspect of healthcare, there are many who work very hard to ensure that mistakes don’t happen and that mistakes are caught and corrected before they create more problems.
