How to avoid medical errors

When people fall sick, they go to health care facilities in search for medical care. People working in health care facilities such as hospitals, clinics and health centers are trained and normally equipped with skills to save people’s lives.However, some unusual circumstances from medical errors could arise and results into an imminent death. Some unfortunate individuals can suffer injuries or acquire diseases from the inefficiency from a health care provider.For example, some patients suffer injuries, normally termed as iatrogenic injuries. These are circumstances where the doctor’s misuse of his profession skills could inflict an injury to the health of his client.These circumstances have in most cases been seen in many surgical cases where health care providers might cut some parts of body system unconsciously while operating a patient or leave some medical instruments inside the body.Today, most of the patients who suffer such injuries have judicial or police interventions to investigate the possible origin or cause of such a horrible medical error. This is an area where the criminal investigation department of police is also able to detect malpractices in the medical profession.Complications of such big medical errors are manifested in various aspects. 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.Injured nerves always lead to paralysis and dysfunction of some body parts, and this partly explains the cause of permanent lameness or loss of natural postural position to some individuals who have undergone surgery early in life.Poor suturing is always another procedure that many clients suffer in health set-ups. For example, poor closure of the abdominal wall can expose the peritoneum and some internal organs, especially the intestines.This communication of the internal organs and the external environment is dangerous because it invites septic infections that in most cases lead to death.Some health care providers have specialized responsibilities such as administration of drugs to patients through intravenous or intra-muscular injections, clean injured parts or exposed parts of the body.These duties are so sensitive in a way that if not done cautiously can lead to damage of a client health. Complication such as pain due to injured nerve or blood vessel, abscess formation, necrosis of the tissue and bleeding are among the repercussions that people with such specialized jobs in a health set-up tend to avoid.Another common medical error is always in drug prescription. Drugs misuse has been dependent on various factors that partly originate from health care providers as well as manufacturing firms that supply medications to health institutions.There are situations where a health care provider prescribes a drug that is contrary to the illness or disease that the patient is actually suffering from.In this case, the patient will take full dosage of the medicine and suffer secondary side effects of the drug. This medical error can even deteriorate a health condition of the patient.Normally health care providers prescribe drugs to patients based on the state of the health condition of the patient, age of the patient, weight and nutritional status. All these are factors that are considered when prescribing drugs to patients.Health care providers are trained to know the action of drugs in the body system. Some drugs are harmful when taken in overdose or when taken at wrong times. Today health care providers have learnt to practice a very drug-intensive style of medicine. Even when changes in lifestyle would be more effective, health providers and their clients often believe that for every ailment and discontent there is a drug.Health providers also believe that the newest, most expensive brand-name drugs are superior to older drugs or generics, even though there is seldom any evidence to that effect because sponsors do not usually compare their drugs with older drugs at equivalent doses.To avoid medical errors, health care providers need to adhere to medical professional pillars such as expertise, ethics, and autonomy. Expertise derives from a body of specialised knowledge and skills whose utility is constantly invigorated by the results of research.Ethical behaviour flows from a unique combination of values and standards, where doctors are expected to put their patient’s interests ahead of their own.Autonomy means that society is willing to allow the profession to function independently because it expects the profession to police itself.