Victims of Errors: A Broader Perspective No one goes into healthcare to hurt peo

Question

Victims of Errors: A Broader Perspective No one goes into healthcare to hurt people, and yet healthcare is a high-stakes arena in which adverse events occur. Based on your understanding of the concept of “victim” in terms of medical errors (as presented in the Learning Resources), complete the following: • Articulate the pros and cons of this statement: Those who make errors that harm patients themselves are victims and need support and perhaps counseling. Then, state your position on the statement. (2–3 paragraphs) • Provide a rationale for your point of view that references the larger context of patient safety, including transparencies, reporting of errors, and accountability. (2–3 paragraphs) • Write a brief analysis of the impact of “no-blame” systems in encouraging providers to report their own mistakes. (2–3 paragraphs)

Explanation / Answer

1) Medical errors are not exceptional cases in the area of health care. The clinicians more often than not try to do no harm if not fully cure the patients. However, unintentional errors do occur and not all errors cause significant harms to patients like failure to report that doctor will get a bit late to arrive in his/her clinic, it will cause some inconveniences but chances of significant harms are not there as compared to an error that can occur due to negligence in prescribing medicines or during a procedure as it can become a matter of life and death. It is no doubt that most of the clinicians themselves feel the pinch of error and become so devastated that they shift the blame.

No doubt human beings are prone to commit errors but health care is an area where providers are dealing with matters related to life and death of a person. Any negligence may bring about a traumatic outcome. Providers should play safe and judge merits and demerits of a procedure or a medicine before recommending it for patients.

Healthcare especially w.r.t procedures that are of moderate complx in nature should be 99.9% error free.

2) When the providers admit their mistakes,a trust develops between practitioners and patients.The fiduciary responsibility of institutions exists in patients’ and families’ trust that providers will take care of them. If providers do not disclose the errors and the mistakes, they do definitely come out in open and often result in compromising the mission of health care organizations.Institutions do have an ethical obligation alligned with their missions to admit clinical mistakes. Professional and organizational policies and procedures, risk management, and performance improvement initiatives demand prompt reporting (Wolf & Hughes, 2008).

3) Hidding mistakes, one after another creates a negative cycle of events. Admission of a mistake by attending physicians and chief nurse executives make the patient and his/her family feel that the clinicians are accountable and the process is transparent. However, physicians’ willingness to disclose errors ensures accountability, honesty, trust, and reducing risk of malpractice, but often physicians hesitate due to the fear of professional repercussions, humiliation, guilt, and lack of anonymity.

Several surveys of patients and the general public have revealed that they believe health care to be only moderately safe and are concerned about errors affecting them if they seek care in hospitals. Specifically, patients are worried about misdiagnoses, physician errors, medication errors, nursing errors, wrong test/procedure errors, and problems with medical equipment (Wolf & Hughes, 2008).

Thus, a no blame system will only help to improve overall quality of care reducing malpractices.

Reference

Wolf, Z, R.& Hughes, R, G.(2008). Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US); 2008 Apr. Chapter 35. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2652/

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