In today’s modern world with plenty of technology, it is hard to believe that we cannot figure out how to reduce medical errors. The issue of medical error is not new in health care organizations. It has been in spot light since 1990’s, when government did research on sudden increase in number of death in the hospitals. According to Lester, H. , & Tritter, J. 2001), “Medical error is an actual or potential serious lapse in the standard of care provided to a patient, or harm caused to a patient through the performance of a health service or health care professional. ” Medical errors are the mistakes made by health care providers with no intention to harm patients. There are few different ways medical error can occurs. Some of them medical errors are surgical error, wrong medicine given to patient, reaction to medication , failure to provide right care to patient on time, communication error between doctor and nurse, manufacture error, equipment failure, Diagnostic error, etc.
According to Mallory, Weller, Bloch, and Maze (2003), The Institute of Medicine found that medical errors kill almost 100,000 Americans per year. Also There are about 1 million injuries per year are caused by medical error. And because of all this error in medical field medical error death is in top 5 cause of death in the hospital. Also medical error is not only affecting the patients, it is also increasing the number of financial costs. In 2008, the annual cost of medical error that harm the patient was $17.
The Term Paper on Improving Patient Care
There is growing enthusiasm in the United States about the use of electronic medical records (EMRs) in outpatient settings. More than $20 billion of the federal economic stimulus (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) is slated to assist physicians, hospitals, and other health care settings in adopting health information technology (Gill, 2009). The government wants to shift into the ...
Medical errors affects the health care organization different ways. Medical errors could happen if hospital or clinic doesn’t have enough medical staff to provide beast care to patient. There are so many facilities has shortage of nurses because of that nurses who work there have to work beyond their regular shift(Mallory, Weller, Bloch, & Maze, 2003).
In this country there are so many nurses who makes medical error when they are giving medication to patient with understaffing and working overtime should blamed for these mistakes.
When hospital don’t have enough nurses to provide care to patient, chances of having medical error increases. Many times to stay under the budget, hospitals decides to replace registered nurses with less-qualified, less-paid licensed nurses. In this case, the remaining registered nurses will have to work overtime and heavy workload to cover the work . Many times one nurse have to cover more than 10 patients at once, which leads to delay of care to patients. Insurance company can get an affect from medical error, which are done by physicians or hospital staff.
Many time we have heard , the patient received wrong prescription or surgery on wrong part of the body. When this kind of medical error happens, either hospital or insurance company have to pay for all of the extra expenses. Many times doctor writes a wrong medical ICD 9 codes, which leads to wrong charges for the treatment given to the patient . ICD9 codes are a system of number that were created by insurance companies to recognize the patient diagnosis without going through the hassle of reading doctors handwriting.
In many cases because of medical error patient receives wrong drug and gets extremely sick. In response to help sick patient hospital will have to use other medication that was not plan to use for this particular patient and insurance will result in paying for all the medicine expanse. In some cases patient gets wrong diagnosis , which can be very costly, time consuming and threat to patient safety and quality care. Many studies have shown that most of the medical errors occurs because of wrong diagnose of patient problem.
The Term Paper on Medical Errors 2
... rates of error and injury occurring during medical care. Patients injured as a result of a medical error spend longer ... typically exposed organizations and individual practitioners to financial penalties, punitive actions concerning professional and organizational licenses, and ... implemented at the broadest variety of healthcare organizations (ISMP). These practical recommendations for safe practice ...
According to Nilson (2009) “The National Patient Safety Foundation stated that 42% of medical patients feel they have experienced a medical error or misdiagnosis, resulting in the cost of medical tests, drugs, and operations. ” Most of the health organization have their own sets of culture, values and beliefs that they want to follow to reach their set goals. The Organizational culture and structure can have real big impact on the quality of care either negatively or positively. If the organizational culture is poor then it is really hard to provide best health care that can work effectively.
Poor organizational culture creates poor work condition at the facilities for workers, which leads to lots of stress and low quality of patient care. A many medical errors caused by employees, who were under lots of stress and workload (Imhof & Kaskie, 2008).
The organizational structure is as important as culture for health organizational to provide best care to patients. According to Glickman, Baggett, Krubert, Peterson, and Schulman, (2008) “Organizational design is a formal, guided process for integrating the people, information, and technology of an rganization, and serves as a key structural element that allows corporations to maximize value by matching their corporate design to overall strategy. ” It is really hard for large organizations to provide high quality of care when the organization structure is not set properly. Most large health organization have their work divided into small tasks and each employee is responsible for his or her duties. As I have discussed earlier communication is major problem in health organization that leads to many medical errors.
Without clear communication between employees it’s hard to have successful organizational structure(Imhof & Kaskie, 2008).
Health organization also gets affected by organizational governance. Organizational governance means having leadership . Many times due to poor leadership in the organization, it becomes hard to get all the staff together and work as a team . Strong leadership is required to have a successful treatment on patient without having medical error. Also, the social responsibility from hospital staff is important to provide care without causing medical errors. All the patients should be first priority for all medical staff.
The Dissertation on Organizational Culture And Its Themes
As one of the key ‘stable factors’, culture within an organization is playing a critical role in the organization’s everyday operations. Although the culture literature has at times focused on the culture of an organization as shared basic assumptions (Schein, 1985), or as metaphors within organizations (Morgan, 1986, 1997), it is not sufficient to attempt to understand and measure them. This ...
Health care organization should try to find resources that can help their organization to reduce medical errors. The most important resource could be allocating enough financial backup. With help of money the organization should work on making hospital equipments and service better, so the chance of medical error can reduces. Many times nurses and physicians make medical error due to not having latest medical equipments in the hospital. Also, try to contact other health organizations, who doesn’t have similar medical error issues as your health organization and learn different way to fight the medical errors problem.
Another huge factor that causes a medical error is not having enough medical staff to provide top quality patient care. Many times medical error occurs because of not having enough nurses and physicians on duty. The shortage of medical staff raises the concern of patient safety. As I have discussed earlier the importance of enough nurses at hospitals or clinic to avoid having medical errors. There are few ethical issues tied to the medical errors issues. One is nonmaleficence, which means the duty to do no harm. The medical staff need to know what harm is and how much harm should be tolerated.
They should always be thinking about positive outcome form their medical action. Doctor wants to give an injection to patient, than he or she should know that patient will feel the pain , but in return patient will benefit from it by gaining the strength to fight against sickness or developing disease. Second Ethical issue is the duty of fidelity, which means medical staff have to give 100% commitment to patient care, medical intervention and in patient recovery. If nurse has to provide a medication to patient on specific time of the day then they must do their job, without delaying it.
There are many different ways the structure, governance and culture of the organization can be changed or improved. The organization need to change their culture to reduce the medical error. The organization committee should come up with new culture that can help to improve medical error issues. Once new culture comes to in effect, employees will have better view about their organizational culture. To fight against the issues in the facility, the organization should change their structure of organization. The new structure should be patient-centered.
The Essay on Medical Paternalism Or Patient Autonomy
A common and controversial issue facing many medical professionals is medical paternalism versus patient autonomy. At the heart of every practitioner/patient relationship is trust, and the duty to uphold the patient’s best interest both ethically and privately. These foundations seem basic on the surface, but underneath lies a much more complex issue. Medical paternalism can be defined as the ...
Patients needs to be first priority for all medical staff. When organization changes their organizational governance, it should be transformational. When the leadership becomes transformational , it makes easier for supervisor and other medical staff to work as a team and avoid having issues like medical errors. Also, the organization should encourage their employees to do lots of extra activities beyond working at the hospital to improve the social responsibility. They should push them to serve as a volunteers in the community programs.
