Mistakes by Medical Professionals are Alarmingly High in America – What Causes Those Major Medical Errors?
The issue of medical malpractice and mistakes made by doctors and medical professionals in patient care has been in the news a great deal recently. A recently published article that was featured in the September 23rd edition of the JAMA publication may add to discussion of how to solve the problem though.
While President Barack Obama launches a federally funded campaign to investigate the causes of medical mistakes in the clinical setting, which are alarmingly high in the US, the report points to a somewhat obvious cause for many of them, fatigue and distress being experienced in high levels by those who practice medicine in a hospital setting.
The research team, which was led by Colin P. West, M.D., Ph.D., of Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota studied data that was culled from interviews with 380 internal medicine residents who began training from 2003 to 2008, who completed quarterly surveys until February 2009. The study participants were from a number of different institutions and located in various different regions of the country. Dr West and his colleagues set out to explore the independent contributions of stress and fatigue in relation to self reported medical errors on the part of the respondents, and did so simultaneously
Out of the 356 study participants who chose to submit error data 39 percent reported that they had made at least one major medical error during the time period covered by the study. In their analysis the researchers examined the relationship between these self reported mistakes and scores on a “sleepiness and fatigue” scale. Each single point increase in fatigue and sleepiness resulted in a 14 percent and 10 percent increase, respectively in the likelihood that a respondent reported having made a serious medical error.
“Fatigue and distress variables remained statistically significant when modeled together with little change in the point estimates of effect. Sleepiness and distress, when modeled together, showed little change in point estimates of effect, but sleepiness no longer had statistical significance associated with errors when adjusted for burnout or depression,” the researchers write.
In the conclusion of their work the researchers reiterate the need for further study into the ways that doctors can be helped themselves, and their levels of work related fatigue and distress lessened, in the hope that many future medical errors can be avoided.
This is especially crucial at this time. A recent Healthgrades study was able to conclude that in the years 2000 to 2002approximately 195,000 in- hospital deaths in the United States during each of those years were due to medical mistakes that could have been prevented.
September 24th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
WOW!!! Imagine how many people are left alive but with serious life changing injuries. My brother’s aeortic valve was torn during a back surgery following a car accident and he complained of not breathing well and they did nothing until he went into cardiac arrest and is now in a coma. His life will never be the same and his wife and children have to care for him at home. The doctors screwed up and they don’t even care. He can’t get nursing care and after going back in they injured him further with their lack of care because they don’t want to pay for their mistakes. With all the money they make and their fancy houses, doctors are starting to get a reputation as bad as lawyers because they are afraid of lawsuits. Why can’t they admit mistakes and pay for them without a family having to lose everything they have first. If that many people died, how many are out there like my brother with devastating injuries??