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Running head: MEDICAL ERRORS

MEDICAL ERRORS 6

Medical Errors

Student Name

Institution Affiliation

Problem Description: Medical Errors

Background of the Problem

Medical errors are defined by the American Institute of Medicine as negligence in observing the programmed measures or the use of a wrong method to achieve a specific purpose. Medical errors also include adverse treatment reactions, wrong diagnoses, from poor monitoring to evaluation. Mortalities ascribed to medical errors have reached staggering numbers, of about 250,000 lives annually in the US. Some sources have put medical errors as the third leading cause of fatalities in the USA. Moreover, the economic burden from medical errors has similarly been astounding, estimated to be about $19.5 billion, most of which is incurred in accessing additional medical care and days of lost productivity. The suffering and disability caused to the individual patient victims also should not be overlooked. Therefore, medical errors are a burden that if left uncontrolled and unregulated is likely to strain the health sector and water down all the gains made over the many centuries (Antunez, human, Jagsi & Dossett, 2018). The World Health Organization estimates that up to 80% of medical errors are preventable and therefore preventive strategies would be effective in curtailing the downward spiral.

The culture of blame, shame and punishment which has been a common practice has been found to be less effective. The combative atmosphere created in most health institutions has worked to discourage the reporting of medical errors by the members of staff. The clinicians have accepted to view medical errors as equals with medical failure, and thus are inclined to hide the errors and undergoing psychological distress as a consequence of errors. Unfortunately, the failure to report medical errors may lead to serious harm on the patients (Hodges, Spiller, Casavant, Chounthirath & Smith, 2018). The study evaluates the existing organization culture in the primary care settings, involving members of different professions and cadres. The majority of medical errors occur at primary care and outpatient care settings, which will be the focus of the study. The study will also seek to determine the factors influencing the cultures at health care settings in relation to handling incidents of medical errors. The factors and attributes found not to concur with the best practice models will be modified. Thereafter, the impact that the modified organization culture will have on the prevention of medical errors will also be determined. It has been found that through the establishment of organizational cultures that focus on recognizing safety challenges and implementing viable solutions significantly curb un-eventualities associated with medical errors, which the study will seek to evaluate (Sutcliffe, 2019).

Stakeholders

The prevention of medical errors and the improvement of patient safety is a shared responsibility of the stakeholders in healthcare: which is to include the general public, legislative bodies, the health practitioners and institution administrators, professional regulatory bodies, researchers and the health care financial institutions. Medical errors are costly not only to the individual patients and their families, but also to the communities they come from (Zabihirad, Mojdeh, & Shahriari, 2019). The healthcare professions include all employees working in healthcare institutions, who are of different professions. Notable among them are the clinicians and nurses who are at times directly culpable of the medical errors and directly face personal effects, such as loss of clinical confidence, psychological distress after inadvertently causing harm to patients and also professional consequences of being deregistered by the licensing professional bodies (Nazmieh et al, 2018). The healthcare financiers, such as insurance institutions, state and federal governments, use considerable funds in handling medical error issues and consequences, funds which could available for development projects. The legislative bodies, and other policy making bodies, have an important role in riding medical errors off the health sector though legal measures to safeguard the patients. Thus by modifying organizational cultures and consequently reducing medical errors, all stakeholder interests are upheld.

PICOT Question

In patients who were attended to at the primary care settings, how does an organizational culture that focuses on recognizing the safety challenges and implementing viable solutions to them, compared to the existing organization culture influence the number of medical errors committed over the study period?

Purpose, Project Objectives, Rationale

The study will seek to evaluate the existing organization culture. The aspects of regard to the evidence-based practice include: the level of trust and integrity, adaptability, orientation to results, the degree of teamwork, accountability, communication and decision making. The Likert scale research tool will be used as the assessment tool, collecting data from the respondents. It will be essential to determine how much the health workers feel empowered to execute their duties correctly and with what degree of scrutiny; how much receptive they are to change and whether there is adequate communication before changes are made at the workplace. Similarly, the study will determine how committed the health workers in meeting patient safety goals and to tasks assigned, the extent of collaboration with each other and with other hospital departments and how errors are handled. Consequently, these aspects will be modified to fit the best practice organizational culture in health care settings.

Subsequently, the number of reported medical errors committed at the primary care settings over the study period will be collected, analyzed and compared to the number of errors committed before the study was commenced (Sorrell, 2017). The expected findings will be that a better organizational culture will register fewer medical errors compared to a punitive organization culture in health care. Moreover, the outcomes of the errors committed would be better to all stakeholders and associated with reduced morbidity and patient mortalities.

References

Antunez, A. G., Shuman, A. G., Jagsi, R., & Dossett, L. A. (2018). Ethical Duty of Health Care Systems to Address Inter-Facility Medical Error Discovery. Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 227(5), 543–547. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2018.08.184

Hodges, N. L., Spiller, H. A., Casavant, M. J., Chounthirath, T., & Smith, G. A. (2018). Non-health care facility medication errors resulting in serious medical outcomes. Clinical Toxicology (15563650), 56(1), 43–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/15563650.2017.1337908

Nazmieh, H., Soroush, M., Farnia, F., Habibian, Z., Dehghan, A. S., & Roozbeh, M. (2018). Investigating the Effect of Senior Managers’ Compliance in Reporting Nurses’ Treatment Errors in Pediatric Wards. Iranian Journal of Pediatric Hematology & Oncology, 8(3), 166–171.

Sorrell, J. M. (2017). Ethics: Ethical Issues with Medical Errors: Shaping a Culture of Safety in Healthcare. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 22(2), 6. https://doi.org/10.3912/OJIN.Vol22No02EthCol01

Sutcliffe, K. (2019). How to Reduce Medical Errors. TIME Magazine, 194(22/23), 25–26.

Zabihirad, J., Mojdeh, S., & Shahriari, M. (2019). Nurse’s perioperative care errors and related factors in the operating room. Electronic Journal of General Medicine, 16(2), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejgm/94220