Reading helps eradicate medical profession mistakes

As a doctor, it’s unusual to spill or cough what takes place behind curtains in our medical professional settings but just to give an insight into possible origin of mistakes that can become costly to the lives of human beings. During my three years as a general practitioner, I hardly spared time to read at night and could always find myself watching sky sports television or watching how Wayne Rooney curves the ball right into the back of the net like other youngsters at home. However, I was so fortunate that my continued interest in research work prompted me to read medical journals and publications from time to time so as to understand what goes around in this field. With my current status as a resident doctor or student doctor, I just realise how important reading or constant revision sharpens mindset of a health practitioner to save lives of people. Our position as residents is to learn and practice at the same time; we are at the point where we have more specified focus or diversified kind of work to pursue. Usually, as student doctors, we are supposed to use 30 per cent of our time to work and 70 per cent of our time to read or go through intensified revision exercise of our daily curriculum activities in details. However, the reverse is true in majority of teaching hospitals and possibly could be the basis of inefficiency seen in some practitioners. When you work a lot as a student doctor, you will please your seniors; they will write a very smart report about you and can make you qualify for your particular specialty as well but in the end suffer detrimental effects of missed time for revision. The cornerstone of all this is that you might have exposure or prior knowledge of the patient problems but you will lack competence or stamina to handle difficult situations. You are comparable to a man with a frontal abdominal ‘hot’ abscess that prefers to take a pain control injection so as to attend a wedding ceremony of his daughter. You dress so nicely with a suit little knowing that any contact to the sick site will expose all your health problems and challenges to the public or else you present yourself in isolation which is as good as absenteeism. Most of the patient problems or symptoms present in indirect manner or tricky situation that prompts health professionals to pull off an imaginative power or invention to be able to handle tricky circumstances and save lives of your patients. Revision makes a specialist doctor develop deeper understanding of patient challenges in his field of specialty, which is more important in modern medical settings. In most cases, doctors who do not or did not go through adequate revision practice find themselves at the center of problems as seen in doctor’s disease, missed or delayed diagnosis or inappropriate prescription of medications. All these are life threatening mistakes that occurs in healthcare settings but that can go unnoticed or punished. Good revision practice is a secret weapon to eradicate all these possible life threatening mistakes. All medical disciplines call for adequate revision strategies though they differ from one to another. Even more practical disciplines such as surgery disciplines require adequate revision especially at the start of the course where you have to master all anatomical trajectories of the human body to prepare yourself with adequate knowledge for practice. The most profound example to point out is the doctor’s disease or iatrogenic injury. It is a situation where a doctor can misuse his profession skill to inflict an injury to the patient as has been reported in some areas of developing world. There are reported surgical mistakes where a doctor can cut or cause an injury unconsciously while operating a patient. Cut or ruptured blood vessel can cause prolonged bleeding, loss of a large quantity of blood in a short period of time that in most cases lead to shock and death is always a major concern to surgeons. Injured nerves always lead to paralysis and dysfunction of some body parts. Poor suturing is always another procedure that many surgeons have suffered. Poor closure of for example the abdominal wall can expose the peritoneum and some internal organs such as the intestines. This communication between internal organs and the external environment is dangerous because it invites septic infections that in most cases lead to death. Nurses in hospitals are always charged with duties such as administration of drugs to patients through intravenous or intra-muscular injections, clean injured parts or exposed parts of the body. There duties are so sensitive in a way that if not done cautiously can harm the health of a person. Health complications such as pain due to injured nerve or blood vessel, abscess formation, necrosis of the tissue and bleeding are among the repercussions that nurses tend to avoid. There are situations where a patient illness can be misdiagnosed or delay in diagnosis will always affect treatment outcome. The issue of delayed or missed diagnosis is the responsibility for doctors and usually occurs to doctors who are not friendly to the revision exercise. Dr Joseph Kamugisha is a resident oncologist in Jerusalem, Israel