The 3 Most Common and Preventable Medical Errors

(Newswire.net — August 17, 2022) — Annually, 2.6 million people die in low-and middle-income countries due to unsafe healthcare, according to a 2019 report from the World Health Organization. This includes patients who are harmed due to medical errors, which costs roughly $42 billion annually. Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the US alone. Most errors represent systemic problems faced by today’s medical and healthcare systems for a long time now.

3 Common Root Causes of Medical Errors

Medical errors can be caused by various factors. These may include personal factors, workplace-related inadequacies, and ineffective workflows and systems. Here are the three most common medical errors healthcare institutions are trying to solve today:

1. Inadequate Staffing

There has always been a high demand for physicians, doctors, and nurses globally, and many hospitals are understaffed. Calamities and unforeseen occurrences of pandemics further aggravate such a situation. For instance, as the world recovered from Covid-19, 20% of US hospitals reported critical staffing shortages in January 2022, the highest since December 2020.

This understaffing directly affects the healthcare workers’ performance. Despite their professional skills, they are still subject to stress and fatigue, which affect their physical and mental health. Working in an understaffed institution means they have to render extra hours and have to attend to more patients than they must. This, in turn, compromises their ability to provide sound and accurate diagnosis and care.

2. Poor Healthcare Information Flow

Communication within a healthcare organization and among healthcare professionals and practitioners is crucial in delivering patients the best quality of care. From diagnosis to requesting laboratory tests, prescribing medications and procedures, and relaying test results, information must be recorded accurately and passed on seamlessly to ensure that a patient gets the right care. Whether until they get well or have to be discharged and transferred to other facilities.

Manual paper-based methods often cause a mix-up in information; worse, information gets misplaced and lost. In the healthcare sector, this can cost someone’s life. Fortunately, technology paved the way to digitize information flow and record keeping. Hospitals can now use Electronic Health Records (EHR) to easily keep track of their patients and share accurate information. Discover what is EHR and what it can do for hospitals and healthcare institutions today!

3. Human Error

Human errors are among the significant causes of medical errors. Despite medical workers being highly trained, they are still human. They can commit mistakes due to internal factors, such as emotions and lack of knowledge, or external factors, such as inaccurate and faulty tools and systems.

Errors such as the inability to provide the necessary care at the right time, poor documentation, and inaccurate labeling of specimens are common human mistakes. This may sound simple and can be corrected, but sometimes, it can lead to medical errors which compromise the quality of care given to a patient.

3 Most Preventable Medical Errors

Errors and mistakes can be forgivable. However, if it involves health and life, it is best to prevent them, rather than correct them. Here are three of the most common yet preventable medical errors:

1. Diagnostic Mistakes

Errors during the diagnosis stage, like misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis, or failure to diagnose, can lead to aggravated sickness, prolonged suffering, and even death. A wrong diagnosis of infectious diseases can easily spread diseases, which can affect more people. Moreover, being unable to diagnose injuries right away can cause other complications and permanent damage to a patient’s body.

Accurate and fast diagnosis is key to delivering the right care that will prevent illnesses and injuries from advancing. Errors during diagnosis are preventable by effectively implementing a systematized and standardized way of checking patients. Properly recording and sharing information with the right people is also necessary.

Diagnostic facilities must always be ready and have the right tools and equipment for providing an initial diagnosis to patients. Ensuring that the staff is well-equipped and in their best condition helps ensure that all patients get immediate attention and are diagnosed accurately.

2. Medication Errors

Healthcare practitioners, from doctors, and nurses to pharmacists and pharmacy staff, handle various medications in a day. With all the chemical and brand names and abbreviations, it is always a possibility that they can get medications mixed up. Poor communication among patients and their doctors or among healthcare practitioners can also cause inaccurate prescriptions.

However, errors that can be considered malpractice are accidentally prescribing or providing the wrong medication or dose or failing to warn the patient of side effects. Medication errors can be considered malpractice and are punishable by law.

Medication errors can be prevented primarily by ensuring practitioners are well-informed and have access to up-to-date data on medications. Proper storage and organization of medications are also a must. Labels must be clear and, if possible, should be recorded in a computer system. Using software to confirm medication names and calculate doses can also help in delivering the right prescription and medications to patients.

3. Infection

Infection and cross-contaminations are considered mistakes in the medical field. They only occur when processes and methods did not work the way they should or have caused complications. Infections can lead to aggravating a patient’s illness or spreading diseases. Therefore, it must be avoided.

Safety protocols must be tightly implemented within hospitals and healthcare facilities to avoid errors such as infection, complications, and cross-contaminations. It is also important to ensure that healthcare practitioners are well-trained and ready to do procedures, like tests and surgeries. They must follow standard operating procedures to ensure the patient’s safety.

Prevent Medical Errors and Save Lives

Medical errors, in a way, are considered unavoidable. Healthcare practitioners are humans and can commit mistakes. Meanwhile, current systems and methods are still flawed, imperfect, and undergoing rapid change. But there are medical-related mistakes that can be minimized and prevented.

Make it a point to keep healthcare workers sharp with up-to-date knowledge, and at the same time, in their best health and mental state. Additionally, leverage today’s innovative technology to digitize manual, error-prone processes, to save time, costs, and even patients’ lives over the long term.