Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20789360/site/newsweek/

The reasons for these almost unbelievable figures are multiple and interrelated. Medicine today is complex. Because medicine is a "profession" and many years of training are required to practice it, it is assumed that doctors have the patients' best interests at heart. But without any central database for our care, a patient I plan to operate on next week may be, right now, in a doctor's office getting a prescription for a drug that will make the proposed operation more dangerous. Unless I ask, I'll never know.

In addition, there are many more drugs, procedures and techniques today than when I graduated from medical school in 1970, yet we haven't learned how to keep up with it all. Information travels remarkably slowly in medicine.

Then there is the culture of the medical profession. Uncooperative behavior by physicians has been tolerated by frustrated nurses and hospital administrators whose bonuses are tied to the hospital revenue generated by these doctors. Intimidating behavior has long been a facet of surgical training. I learned from the best: surgeons who would slap residents during a case, intimidate nurses or throw instruments. Most didn't, but some did.

...

Most everybody I know in medicine is bright, hardworking and altruistic. Many, though, have been beaten down by hundreds of urgent pages, middle-of-the-night phone calls, decreasing reimbursement, more paperwork and less grateful patients. These doctors have become less careful, and their patients suffer as a result.

It is time for my colleagues and me to reclaim our profession. It is time for doctors and nurses to work together, time for electronic records to actually work in providing the right information to the right person, time for pharmacists and nurses and social workers and doctors to see patients together.

I'm putting this in debates just 'cause we're the way we are, but dh & I agree WHOLEHEARTEDLY with this guy (who, BTW, is a doctor).

[PrincessFiona]

Re: Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

I totally agree too.....I mean...can you imagine a surgeon slapping a resident? :tsk:

I still feel protective of doctors in general though. I think most are hardworking and medical errors happen because doctors are human...and because patients aren't always honest.

DH's mentor in med school told him that the first rule of medicine is that patients are fawking liars. DH says he was right

kris

[Meenah]

Re: Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

patients are fawking liars. DH says he was right

Amen to this!!!!!!!

[SuzySunshine]

Re: Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

Very interesting and I would say for the most part I do agree with him. There is a surgeon here that blames his mistakes on the residents, he's pretty much the only jackass in the department according to DH.

And you know what - he's right, the doctors don't necessarily need more money if doctors and nurses (and everyone) worked together more they probably wouldn't need to work insane hours b/c they could trust others to do some of the work and they could spend more time with their families.

Re: Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

I still feel protective of doctors in general though. I think most are hardworking and medical errors happen because doctors are human...and because patients aren't always honest.

Me too - especially in the litigous sense. There's a commercial on the radio here for an MD/JD that is an ambulance chaser, and it just makes me SICK.

BUT - what I took from this is the need for a comprehensive way to follow a patient - both b/c of poor communication between teams, and b/c of fawking liars. From an electronic medical records POV, I wholeheartedly agree with him. DH runs into doctors all the time who are SO resistant to EMR b/c it's "too hard". He says "Was filling out your medical school application too hard? How about your boards?"

[DCJenn]

Re: Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

All of our records are electronic- except the fawking doc who WILL NOT use the automated medical record system which is available to him. So instead, his shit is on blue copy paper and everything else (caseworker notes, financials, etc) are in the state's electronic medical record system.

We're reaching a point VERY soon when he's just going to have to do it. Knowing him, he'll retire first.

and um, hello? Want to talk about liars? How about heroin addicts! We have lots of controls though- unique client identifiers, we have to call the central registry to make sure they're not dosing anywhere else, we ask for copies of ids and social security cards, etc.

I'm sure some get through but we do our best to make sure that people aren't scamming the system.

Jenn

Re: Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

All of our records are electronic- except the fawking doc who WILL NOT use the automated medical record system which is available to him. So instead, his shit is on blue copy paper and everything else (caseworker notes, financials, etc) are in the state's electronic medical record system.

DH always says that the biggest problem with medicine is doctors.

[GrayMatterWife]

Re: Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

[Sorry...I meant to delete this one and somehow botched it.]

[GrayMatterWife]

Re: Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

I totally agree too.....I mean...can you imagine a surgeon slapping a resident? :tsk:

My advice to DH: don't EVER throw the first punch, but if an attending hits you, HIT BACK as long as you are not in front of patients, you DO have a third-party witness to whole thing, and you are not otherwise jeopardizing any third parties. You have a legal right to defend yourself. Your career at the institution--probably in the field--is OVER the second he hits you, anyway, so you don't have to just sit there and take it.

Not that he asked, but if DH asked if he should hit back if attacked by another RESIDENT, my response, only half-joking, would be: not if he's in your department! Otherwise, you'd better, or I don't think your department would respect YOU anymore...[/quote]

Re: Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

An attending hit DH with an instrument when he was a med student. :huh:

[GrayMatterWife]

Re: Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

An attending hit DH with an instrument when he was a med student. :huh:

Some people are such as$hats.

Re: Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

True, she did it because she could. A resident told DH not to worry about it because she had done it before. He should be flattered she noticed him.

[PrincessFiona]

Re: Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

An attending hit DH with an instrument when he was a med student. :huh:

:waiting:

[Auspicious]

Re: Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

My husband got rapped on the knuckles with the scalpel as a student. The surgeon said "suction" and apparently he didn't want the blood suctioned, he wanted the smoke from the bovie (?) suctioned. I'm like, "I can't believe he used the scalpel." "Well, it was the flat side of the blade." "Still not okay!" "That's true."

He also says "It's hard to even impress on people outside medicine what kind of people these really are." Sociopaths?

I think the guy's statement that "Most didn't, but some did" fits my husband's experience, too, though. He's met at least as many people who are the opposite of jackasses. It just kind of makes it stand out that they don't have to be an ass to do their job well--they're just that way by choice.

[GrayMatterWife]

Re: Newsweek "My Turn" on Medical Errors

Oh, gosh...I SO WISH I could post my story on this topic. It physically HURTS to keep this bottled up.