Emergency Room Case Study
Employing Strategies to Reduce Mistakes in Emergency Rooms
Introduction The Emergency Room of a hospital is where patients get immediate treatment and care. Because this is where patients usually head to, it is one of the busiest departments in a medical facility. It is in the Emergency Room where patients are given the right drug and the right diagnosis and where members of the medical staff have adequate support in order to provide the best care for the patients. However, mistakes occur in all parts of medicine (Schenkel, 2008). No matter how doctors and nurses work hard to prevent errors, there are some cases wherein patients in the ER are not given the right treatment or diagnosis resulting in complications and even death. Lowry (2010)
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This is because the technical aspect involves the giving of diagnosis and it is when missed diagnoses are given that patients are put to harm. The Emergency Department is one which is tasked to give correct and timely diagnoses (Kachalia et al, 2007) and that in the steps taken in the ER such as consultations, admissions and discharge, utmost care should be given so as to avoid malpractice which could lead to lawsuits. Errors in the Emergency Room arise when a doctor gives a wrong diagnosis after misjudgment of symptoms (Tibbles, 2011) and these may be caused by unavailability of timely information, or late access to lab …show more content…
Perhaps, there might even be unreported cases of tragedies caused by medical errors. People are expecting to be cared for once they are in the hospital, and becoming a victim of medical error or medical malpractice is the least that people would expect from health care professionals. Among the different departments of a health care facility, it is the Emergency Room that patients turn to for assessment, diagnosis and treatment. For this reason, it is necessary for health care professionals to provide excellent service to ER patients by putting the patients’ safety and wellness as a priority. In order to reduce errors in the Emergency Room, health care professionals must employ strategies that would target aspects of the Emergency Department where errors are most likely to occur. The use of these strategies would help the staff and personnel of the Emergency Room to do their jobs better despite the pressure and challenges involved in their job. Most importantly, using these strategies can provide better service to
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818 Words | 4 PagesChanges to lower the number of medical mistakes According to Media Health Leaders medical mistakes are the third leading cause of death in the United States. Hospitals today are making life threatening mistakes and are looking for a way to fix their ways of error. Three methods that would help lower the number of medical mistakes are the increasing patients’ engagement, improving physician guidelines, while decreasing faculty shifts hours. Being aware of your condition and diagnosis would help decrease the chance of experiencing a medical error, because you would have more than just the doctor involved in your overall treatment.
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1534 Words | 7 PagesConcerns in the area of Emergency Room (ER) physician fatigue are mostly in the areas of patient satisfaction and medical errors, yet many of the concerns regarding quality of care from physicians originate from sleep deprivation. The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) recommends 8 hours of sleep per night for an adult (Malik SW, Kaplan J., 2005). Sleep deprivation can be caused by insufficient sleep or disjointed sleep or both. Adults who get fewer than 5 hours of sleep will show a decline in peak alertness (Carskadon MA, Dement WC, 1982). Fatigue among healthcare professionals is a growing concern.
Essay On Medication Errors In Nursing
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Hospital Overmedication
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Medication Errors Case Study
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