Americans are dying from preventable medical mistakes. In a report issued two years ago, the number of deaths by this cause was estimated at 44,000 to 98,000 per year.
Among the general public, 10 percent have had a family member die due to a medical mistake along with seven percent of physicians. The medical mishaps are also causing serious injuries, as 17 percent of the public and 12 percent of doctors say that they or a relative have had to miss work or school due to a medical error, according to a new survey. Overall, 42 percent of the public and 35 percent of physicians reported that they themselves had experienced a medical error.
Despite these results, neither doctors nor the public ranked medical error as one of the top four problems in medical care. Ranking higher were the costs of medical care and drugs, the cost of malpractice coverage, influence of insurance companies and the large number of uninsured people.
The study’s goal was to measure the public’s experience with medical mistakes and record their opinions on how to remedy the problem. About 780 doctors and 1,260 physicians responded to the survey.
Although experts say that improved systematic policies and technology, such as computer programs that order drugs and tests in hospitals, could reduce medical errors by more than 80 percent, survey respondents tended to disagree. Doctors tended to list nurse shortage and overworked health care workers as playing a "very important" role in causing the errors. Of the public, 75 percent mentioned doctors not spending enough time with patients as a major cause.
Another question, asking whether only trained specialists should be allowed to work in intensive care units, yielded differing results. About one-third of doctors, but three-quarters of the public, felt this would be effective in reducing medical errors. Researchers believe that, if implemented, this practice could save 50,000 lives a year.
Responses also differed regarding the reporting of errors. Close to 70 percent of the public believed that all serious errors should be reported to a state agency, compared with 25 percent of doctors.
According to researchers, the national agenda for medical error reduction focuses on correcting system errors, as opposed to personal errors. They say that the public, including doctors, has not yet become involved in the agenda.
New England Journal of Medicine December 12, 2002;347(24):1933-40
It is not surprising that the traditional medical paradigm is one of the largest contributors to premature death in the United States, but the fact that the doctors involved in the system are also suffering from medical mistakes is.
Mistakes are one issue, and the national nursing shortage is another. Our country has a critical deficiency of nurses. The chances for being injured in a hospital are bad enough without factoring in an overworked and underpaid nursing staff.
It’s apparent that we have a serious problem when over 70 percent of the public, but only about 25 percent of doctors, said that all serious errors should be reported to a state agency. While I am not a large fan of government intervention, if no one is assuming responsibility for these errors the likelihood for preventing them in the future will remain remote.
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