It was a medical mistake, should the doctor be accountable? The concept of medical errors and doctor accountability is usually asked about and will be further discussed. Countless protocols and hospital policies the doctors and other health professionals follow to help the patient heal and prevent any medical mistakes are present . In some cases, these protocols and policies are not followed like they are supposed to, causing patient harm. These errors are most of the time blamed on other healthcare professionals other than the doctor.
Medication errors are one of the most serious issues dealt with in the healthcare setting. It accounts for many complications that could potentially harm the patient and the administrator themselves. Medication errors may be preventable, and although the healthcare professional is responsible for the patient’s medication while in their care, inappropriate medication use may still occur. Human error is a huge contributor for the flaw in the administration of medication, which could be influenced by many factors. A simple way to address the problem of the misuse of medication is to look at the contributing factors that lead to the error and utilise the “five rights” for safe practice.
Day-4 clinical experience, I was scheduled to stay in the surgery/OR department to watch some procedure. The surgery/OR department is completely different than Med-Surg department. Nurses who work in the OR department seems very busy and fast when they do the patient assessment on the arrival to the department. In this department, the number-one priority nursing care I have seen was patient safety and requires teamwork and interprofessional collaboration. Because surgery is invasive and involves exposure to various anesthetic agents and drugs, and other environmental hazards, complications are common.
For examples, for elderly patients, primary care doctors can warn them about the importance of exercising regularly and controlling diets, so as to prevent progression of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. By altering life style, patients’ risk of suffering from chronic illnesses will be reduced, this can lower the burden of public hospitals in handling with chronic illnesses. Primary care doctors have the ability to analyze and decide whether the patients require a referral to specialists. Instead of referring the patients that are hard to handle immediately, primary care doctors should treat the patients with their utmost effort if they have the ability to treat the patients. Some doctors are not fulfilling their own roles nowadays, they are not treating patients if they found the conditions are complicated and take long time of following up, they will rather referring to specialists than treating it themselves, this will increase the burden on the specialists service.
All in all, these problems are important to consider reducing because they have effects on operations in hospital and can cause decrease of patient visits, inefficiency in information management and increase of costs. It is important to support hospitals to focus more on improving their hospital information systems by improving technological advancements because it is the heart of the health care
Communication about patient safety can be categorized into: prevention of errors and responding to effects caused by errors (adverse effects). The use of effective communication techniques amongst health care team can help in the prevention of errors, whereas ineffective communication contributes immensely to its occurrence. If ineffective communication contributes to an unfavourable event, then better effective communication skill must be applied to achieve the most favourable or optimum patient safety. There are different approaches and techniques in which healthcare personnel can work to improve patient safety and they include both verbal and the nonverbal communication as well as effective use of appropriate communication technologies. Bramhall (2014) highlights that common barriers to effective communication for patient include environmental such as noise, lack of privacy and control, fear and anxiety, inability to explain feelings and exerting oneself to appear strong whereas healthcare professional barriers include lack of time and support, staff conflict, lack of skills to adequately cope with patient’s questions and overwhelming
The duration a patient spends in the hospital also have a major role in affecting effective staffing in allocating staff in the ward, the head nurse have to check the type of patient in the ward. There are times when one patient will seem like eight patient because of the condition of the patient. The patient will require complete care and this will necessitate more number of staff on duty. Example, if there is a patient bleeding profusely and another patient having difficulty with breathing and still there are two or more patient who were just wheeled from the theatre. If the number of staff on duty are three and the total patient in the ward is twenty four, it will be very difficult for the staff to cope and this will be seen as inadequate staffing.
This would promote patient safety as nurses would have time to focus and concentrate on the task, improve accuracy and notice any medication faults or errors. A nurse could further protect themselves from interference by wearing a ‘do not disturb’ vest while carrying out rounds. These steps could greatly promote patient safety, reduce errors and notice mistakes. There are several causes for why medication errors occur, however a less common one can also be patient related. Some patients are prone to medication errors, it could be their characteristics, their body e.g.
I do believe it is important to show the capability to comprehend and share feelings of another. I believe more primary care providers need to be more empathetic in practice. Understandably, this could be a result from desensitization of the job since providers often encounter and deal with difficult situations. The reality is that our patients have emotions and fears when they come to the office. When someone hears that he/she has cancer and understanding that this may result in ending someone’s life, we need to be the professionals that stand by their side to help them through the process on step at a time.
Miscommunication in the healthcare setting can lead to sever life threatening situations that I have seen personally. Communication between clinicians and patients should be the number one focus point. This is how some of the best treatments and diagnosis are done through communication. If medical professional do not properly communicate with other clinicians it can lead to errors in diagnosis the patient. For example, if a patient comes in unresponsive and the person who is with them at the time knows little English and trying to explain what medicine the patient is allergic too and this is where the language barrier comes into to