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Medical Errors

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 medical error from active which involve health care provider to latent which are hidden within the healthcare system.

Medical errors are associated with inexperienced physicians, new procedures, extremes of age, complex care and urgent care. Poor communication, improper documentation, illegible handwriting, inadequate nurse to patient ratios, similarly named medications, patient actions and healthcare providers’ lack of sleep are also among the contributing factors in medical errors. Examples of errors include:
  1. Misdiagnosis
  2. Giving the wrong drug or wrong patient, wrong chemical, wrong dose, wrong time, wrong route
  3. Giving two or more drugs that interact unfavourably or cause poisonous metabolic by-products
  4. Wrong-site surgery, such as amputating the wrong limb
  5. Gossypiboma (also called textiloma or cottonoid), a surgical sponge left behind inside the patient after surgery
Medical error reporting is a debated issue and therefore there are no concrete statistics for the prevalence of medical errors due to the lack of effective medical error reporting systems.

References:
Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, (2007). Czech Republic Court Awards Damages to Romani Woman Claiming Sterilization Without Consent, Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy, USA [available at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?hint=2&DR_ID=48213] [viewed on 30/11/2008]

Marx, D. (n.d). Bezpeci Zdravotni Pece Aktualni Pohled na Nastroje Managementu Rizik (ppt. 5, 13 -16, 21, 22), Praha

Ondřichová, L. (2008). Poskytujeme Bezpečnou Péči?, Medical Tribune 3/2008 (p. A16), Praha [available at http://www.medical-tribune.cz/archiv/mtr/179/4941] [viewed on 19/11/2008]

Wikipedia, (2008). Medical Error, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_error [viewed on 19/11/2008]

Article is a segment of a past assignment entitled, "Medical Errors" written for Charels University in Prague, 2008.

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