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Do doctors ever make mistakes?
How can doctors, hospitals, and other medical providers reduce the number of mistakes they make?
asked Jul 29, 2010 at 07:13PM in General Medicine
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answered Aug 01, 2010 at 12:15AMLet's rephrase this a little: doctors, hospitals, and other medical providers can do their best to avoid mistakes. There are individuals who make mistakes, but to balance things a bit, many, many doctors are more accurate than inaccurate.
That being said, it's up to the patient to call the shots on whether a doctor seems competant enough to treat him/her.-
I'm just trying to introduce the subject of medical error, see http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Medical_errorFred Bauder commented Aug 01, 2010 at 01:34AM
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answered Aug 02, 2010 at 11:37PMYes, as a human being, it is possible that the doctors do mistake(s). But as educated people, doctors are trying much more than others to avoid from mistakes.-
The question is two fold: what techniques do you use to avoid mistakes? and what do you do to recognize and correct mistakes?Fred Bauder commented Aug 03, 2010 at 03:27AM
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completely agree.Gopal Chandra Ghosh commented Jan 06 at 09:25AM
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answered Aug 04, 2010 at 07:49AMPerhaps it is more appropriate to the discussion of the topic of "mistakes" to define what mistakes are being made. For example, a mistaken diagnosis (diagnostic error) is one whereas a therapeutic mistake such as administering the wrong medication or surgically removing the wrong kidney is another. Certainly there are differences in the development of one or the other and there would be different approaches in each toward prevention or mitigation of the mistake. Which or both types of mistakes are we discussing here? ..Maurice.-
There are all kinds of errors, and not always a doctor's responsibility. One error is a patient being given the wrong dosage of medication or having a prescription filled with the wrong medication. That can be due simply to poor handwriting. Obviously, those particular errors can be avoided by the methods used to avoid any clerical error; appropriate word processing and proofreading. This is a world apart from making jokes about your bad handwriting and continuing to scribble indecipherable prescriptions.Fred Bauder commented Aug 04, 2010 at 08:36AM
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0Votesanswered Aug 04, 2010 at 08:04AMAfter reading http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Medical_error
is there anything further to discuss except as healthcare providers, how we personally feel and then what we do when we make one kind of mistake or another? ..Maurice.-
That article could be improved; an even better article could be written here, and the techniques developed to avoid and mitigate medical error can be routinely applied to reduce the death toll.Fred Bauder commented Aug 04, 2010 at 08:39AM
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I thought that the content and descriptions of medical error in your wiki was just great and should be a very good resource for discussion of the subject. I would be particularly interested regarding the professional emotional consequences of doctors who made a mistake (of one of the 3 classes of mistakes: "no fault", "system related" or "cognitive"). ..Maurice.Maurice Bernstein MD commented Aug 04, 2010 at 12:31PM
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Citizendium is not my wiki, if anyone's it is Larry Sanger's wiki. That article is not finished and I've not worked on it for a year or so. There could be an article here, as there is on Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_error The Institute for Healthcare Improvement is a good resource: http://www.ihi.org/ihi With respect to your specific questions, The classification system you ask about comes from this article: http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/165/13/1493 Diagnostic Error in Internal Medicine I'm not sure where they got it or whether it's best classification.Fred Bauder commented Aug 04, 2010 at 01:47PM
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answered Dec 28 at 11:35PMYes! And I experienced this firsthand with my twins with a lack of a diagnosis for close to two years because of "doctor's mistakes." Mostly it was lack of follow through and attention to the case and details -- and this was at a MAJOR well known hospital. I am sure they thought I was a crazy, over protective Mom.
We finally found a doctor determined to take on our case and work with us and she could see something was seriously wrong with our twins.
Once we solved it (it is extremely rare / 500 known cases in the world) we moved on to find treatments.
We probably could have sued ...... but people make mistakes. Even doctors.-
Failure to make a difficult diagnosis is understandable. Spreading staph around a hospital because of failure to wash your hands quite another.Fred Bauder commented Jan 06 at 11:46AM
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