By: Carolyn J. Starks
Recently, the issue of major concern in US society has become the decrease in respect and belief towards doctors and medicare system in general. Public moods are easy to explain considering the fact of numerous medical errors that have taken place in medical institutions’ practices over the past several years. (GAO, 2003). Only 45 percent of heart attack-patients receive medications that could reduce their risk of death by more than 20 percent. Only 39 percent of patients with pneumonia received the best-recommended care. In fact, physicians, hospitals, and nursing homes have admitted there have been some problems pertaining to the issue. Yet, they claim they are not the only ones to blame since the Medicare system in the USA hasn’t shown any signs of perfection or even slight improvement towards finding ways to prevent or eliminate the problem.
To be specific, there exist two types of medical errors, which are usually referred to as Latent Failure and Active failure. The first one deals with mistakes made by people who are not directly involved in the workplace. Such mistakes are often made due to the common factors as workloads, fatigue, lack of knowledge or absence of some information, poor equipment and supervision failure. As for Active failures, they are committed by people within the system. That is to say they are made by pilots, air-traffic controller, anesthetists, surgeons, physicians, nurses, etc. Such mistakes are the matter of primary concern, since they arise memory lapse, slips during actions, mistakes due to ignorance or misreading a situation.
Unfortunately, not enough attention is paid to the causes of the problem. It leads to the situation when solutions are sought in the wrong directions or they are failed to be found at all. Therefore, the urgent concern of both government and public organizations should lie in the attempt to correlate problem-solution issue to find effective ways out of such a sad situations. Otherwise, the rate of 44000 to 98000 people who are dying in hospitals due to medical errors each year will remain stable. It means that the nation will loose even more people that it could lose during the war. Just think about the figure!
The causes of the problem that deals with medical errors can be divided in two groups: objective and subjective. The first group mostly comprises the organizational issues. First of all, the process of treatment isn’t arranged well. After-treatment procedures are not strictly followed. The conditions of the patient are not checked as frequently as they should be. There are often failures in the electronic system that possess patient’s personal information and thus intended to follow and regulate his/her current situation. The lack of responsibility or even negligence lead to the situations described above. In such cases medical institution has to improve its managerial processes or implement direct control-reporting system so everyone within an organization knows what he/she is supposed to do and take care of.
The second major organizational problem is the fact that many physicians are simply overloaded with patients. Emergency rooms are often overcrowded. Thus, a lot of hospitals simply run out of drugs and other necessary medicine. That is why, many patients who could be saved if they are provided with necessary pills, simply die in the hospital rooms. Who are to be blamed for this? Not only hospital itself, but the Government as well is responsible for proper drugs provision of all medical institutions in the country. Medical care system should be the primary concern of the Government, since health is the most valuable thing anybody has.
Another vulnerable issue in the medical sphere has to do with the actual right to provide medical services. Unfortunately, licensing and certification are drowned in the millions of other problems concerning healthcare system. (Fanu, 1999) However, the qualification of a doctor directly influences the treatment process outcome. Nobody is willing to rely on the person who doesn’t have enough knowledge. Yet, the other problem derived from this issue is the fact that very often patients are not told about the individual that is going to take care of them. Thus, they don’t have their say about serious surgery or any other medicare procedure. The ignorance of the doctor combined with the ignorance or better to say the absence of information of the patient lead to fatal mistakes that cause life or normal existence to many people. Therefore, it is important to notice that appropriate licensing and certification procedures should be implemented and strictly controlled by authorities. Moreover, legislation that obliges all medical institutions give full information about both physicians and medical procedures must be adopted.
Concerning subjective causes of medical mistakes, they usually lie on the surface of ethical issues and personal responsibility. Very often, doctors are more concerned with their salary than with their patients. Medicine is a special sphere where devotion plays significant role. Thus, all medical workers have to love what they are doing. However, many of them did come into profession solely because of the financial benefits it gives. This is a problem of morality, values and beliefs. This is a problem of ethics in society. Unfortunately, no governmental or public institution can solve it, unless each medical worker understands his/her personal responsibility and duty, unless each of them understands what is the primary goal he/she is supposed to pursue. Collective discussion can actually help providing adequate information and substantial ground for thought for future medical students and medical workers, especially doctors.
Unfortunately, such kind of lack of devotion and some sort of negligence both on behalf of doctors as well as on behalf of communities lead to the situation when nobody cares about anything. Physicians, overloaded with patients, try to do everything as fast as possible; nurses, tired of noise and crowds, avoids deep contacts with patients and ignore any signs of possible problems; medical staff that is in charge of testing and laboratory examination lack eighter knowledge or experience and is confused with the work needed to be done. All this leads to hectic situations within the hospital, which is not controlled or supervised. No wonder, so many people die simply waiting for a doctor or being a victim of incompetence or drug shortage.
Medical mistakes became the real disaster of the beginning of 21st century. It is not a personal problem. It is a problem of the whole society. Therefore, both Government and public organizations including separate communities have to say their word to improve current situation. The things of crucial importance in this case are governmental control and personal responsibility. We must understand that our life is really in our hands. Each and everyone has to take action to eliminate and prevent the problem to save someone’s life.
For more information visit:
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s 20 Tips to Help Prevent Medical Errors