An online medical journal has been launched to educate health care providers about medical errors. The journal, AHRQ WebM&M (Morbidity and Mortality Rounds on the Web), provides safety lessons from actual cases of medical errors.
Morbidity and Mortality (M&M) conferences are routinely held in hospitals so that clinicians can discuss issues related to medical errors. The Web-based journal will allow such issues to be compared and discussed on a national or even international level, which has not been an option in the past.
The medical community will be able to share experiences anonymously, allowing physicians an opportunity to educate other providers without fear of punishment.
The site will post five cases of medical errors and patient safety problems each month, one from each of the following areas: medicine, surgery/anesthesiology, obstetrics-gynecology, pediatrics and other fields including psychiatry, emergency medicine and radiology. Expert commentaries and a forum for readers’ comments will also be posted.
One of the cases each month will be expanded into an interactive learning module to include readers’ polls and quizzes and offering continuing medical education credits.
Cases that will be featured in the journal’s first issue include a mix-up involving two patients with the same last name in the same hospital room, a mistaken drug administration causing a patient to stop breathing unexpectedly, and a procedural mishap requiring emergency vascular surgery.
Researchers hope that the site will help to break the silence surrounding medical errors and provide a way for physicians to grow from the mistakes, ultimately improving patient safety.
Science Blog February 12, 2003
This is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, it will only address system issues, which are responsible for only a minority of the harm and damage caused by physicians.
The bulk of the problem will not be solved by this new Web site as it in no way addresses the underlying foundational issues that display a profound ignorance of basic health principles and a focus on drugs and a surgical-based model to treat disease.
Ultimately, it is my hope and passion that this Web site will have a profound influence in facilitating the necessary transformation of the existing medical paradigm into one that is freed from the influence of the drug companies and can assist people in achieving the full measure of health that they were designed to have.