Humans error in health care leads to devastating impact on patients

All people visit to hospitals on trust that they are safe and will be given best treatment to save their life. But due to ignorance, carelessness, lack of technical advancement, medical error is done by clinical staff and patients have to pay heavy price of this blunder in terms of losing their money and health.

A medical error is an avoidable adversative effect of care. It may be dangerous for the patient. These errors may be an inaccurate or incomplete diagnosis or treatment of a disease, wound, syndrome, behaviour, infection, or other illness. At global scale, medical reports revealed that thousands of people died from unfavourable effects of medical treatment. These errors are also called humans error in health care arena. These errors happen when health care professionals diagnose the disease wrongly or lab staff inaccurately prepares the medical reports of patient whether it is blood report or other diagnostic reports. Sometimes, practitioners or radiologists wrongly read the CT scan/ MRI or ultrasound reports.

There are several grounds of medical error occurring in health care units or in hospitals. Medical errors are basically linked with inexperienced physicians and nurses, and complex or urgent care. There is an example of inefficient staff in top level hospital. A person visited hospital for preventive health check-up and he was to go for TMT and ECG. There was long queue in ECG. As a result, attending staff diverted him to go first for TMT and then ECG. In this case, patient was well educated IT professional. He shouted that check with senior doctor as ECG will be done first and then TMT. Attending staff rushed to senior doctor and patient’s words were right. This shows incompetency of medical staff.

Other leading causes of medical error are inefficient communication, preparing incorrect documentation, unreadable handwriting, and insufficient nurse-to-patient ratios. Majority of medical errors result from defective systems and poorly designed processes or unskilled consultants. Here another example can be cited. A female registered for complete health check-up in hospital which has superior brand recognition in health care. She was confident to get good care and heath check-up. On registration day, she had some personal health issue, still she visited to hospital for lab tests. She gave samples for tests but some tests were restricted due to some health issues emerged. After that she went for other radiology examination like X-ray and ultrasound. While she was waiting for these examination, she received the reports of tests for which she had not given sample. She and her parents were shocked and annoyed with hospital management. This is clearly the case of carelessness of lab staff responsible for preparing reports. 

Numerous medical errors done by medical team which may be threatening for the life of patients such as misdiagnosis or late diagnosis, prescribing wrong drug to the wrong patient or in the wrong way, giving multiple drugs that interact negatively, surgery on an incorrect spot, failure to remove all surgical instruments, or improper record-keeping.

In order to lessen the incidence of medical error, health care personnel must recognize their causes, formulate solutions and measure the success of improvement efforts. Meanwhile, attendants must be alert and try read the lab report. There is a normal range of every test and in this way, attendants can assess that whether the symptomatic conditions are matching with the test results if they understand the parameters. They can also raise this issue with doctors if test results deviate from symptoms exhibiting by patient.

In binding the strands of this heated issue, it is said that medical errors signify a serious health problem and pose a risk to patient wellbeing. Medical errors are faults in health care and that can averted.

Important: This article is developed through environmental information,  and/ or personal view of writer. Writer is not responsible for any disagreement