Medical Error Reporting

Medical Error Reporting

One major issue in health care is medical errors. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more people die yearly as a result of medical errors than from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. As health care providers, we strive in providing care safe for our patient. By ensuring that the standard of care is provided, we can achieve safe care and prevent any medical errors that may occur.

What is a Medical Error?

A medical error is described as an adverse event that is avoidable with the current state of medical knowledge. These events may have resulted in an accident, illness, or injury to the patient. As mentioned earlier, medical errors are avoidable if health care providers can follow the standard of care when providing care. Medical errors should be reported to make others aware of this error and prevent others from making the same mistake over again.

Medical Error Example (1)

An example of medical error is a surgical procedure done on the wrong body part. A patient comes in for a right leg amputation but instead the left leg was amputated. It is important that when performing a surgical procedure, a checklist has to be followed and applied before and after the procedure. First, the right body part has to be marked, not once but twice to make sure the right body part is being operated on. We cannot always assume that the right leg was marked, but as a patient advocate we have to check to see which has to be amputated and if it is marked correctly. It is also important to make use of pre-op assessment and time-outs during the procedure. These pre-assessments are done to prevent errors from happening and a lapse in these procedures can result in an error done by our health care providers.

Medical Error Example (2)

Another example of a medical error is wrong medication administration. A wrong medication administration would be giving a patient a wrong medication or a wrong dosage. This event can be preventable if proper checks are done while distributing medication. The five rights to a medication administration should always be used regardless if you know that patient already. These checks were developed to make sure that the right medication is always distributed to the right patient and following these step can ensure patient safety. It is also important to check whether the medication being administered is appropriate for that patient. Physicians orders does not always ensure that the medication is right for the patient, but as patient advocates, we have to make sure that the medication being ordered is safe for that patient.

What is a Reportable Medical Error?

Reporting a medical error is important to enhance patient safety by helping staff understand the