Health In-Print

Medical errors happen when something that was planned as a part of medical care does not work out or when the wrong plan was used in the first place. Medical error and mistakes can occur anywhere in the healthcare system; in hospitals, clinics, outpatient surgery centers, doctor’s offices, nursing homes, pharmacies and even at a patient’s home. Deficiencies in system design can create problems at many levels. Errors can involve medicines, surgery, diagnosis, equipment, lab reports and so on. They can happen during even in the most routine tasks, such as when a hospital patient on a salt-free diet is given a high-salt meal. Common causes of medical errors include: i. Fundamental difficulties in medical care: Providing health care is a difficult task and it is expected for some level of mistakes to occur. This involves the basic difficulty in balancing the need to double-check to avoid diagnosis errors with the need to avoid over-testing. The impossibility of doctors, and even spe...

In Ostrava, Czech Republic, October 2007, the regional court ordered a local hospital to pay a Romani woman 500,000 koruna, in damages for performing a sterilization procedure without first obtaining her consent. This is one example of a medical error, however, none knows exactly how many mistakes take place and the majority of them do not even get reported. The issue of medical errors in the administration of medicines to patients was the highlight of the conference entitled ‘Provide Safe Care’ held on 31st January 2008 in Prague. These mistakes do not only occur in the Czech Republic but even in other countries, and in some cases they may even result in death of the patient. It is therefore very important to understand the concept of medical error. A medical error is an inaccurate or incomplete diagnosis and/or treatment of a disease, injury, syndrome, behaviour, infection or other ailment. However, medical error definitions are subject to debate, as there are many types of medica...