Reduce Medical Errors | Patient Safety

Reduce Medical Errors and Enhance Patient Safety

The following five steps to safer health care are taken and modified from the Patient Fact Sheet from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality(AHRQ), Department of Health and Human Service.

1. Ask questions if you have doubts or concerns. There are no stupid questions. Make sure you understand the answers. The answers must be candid. Take a relative or a friend with you to help you ask questions and understand answers. Be careful not to bring some one who has a history of hostility toward the medical profession.

2.Keep and bring a list of ALL the medicines you take. The list should include non-prescription medicicines. Don't forget to tell your pharmacist and doctor about any herb or supplements that you are taking also because these can cause bad interaction with your prescription medicines.
Tell or remind them of your dru allergies.
Read the label on the bottle of the medicine before taking it.
Ask questions if the medicine looks different than the one you are taking or the dosage seems incorrect.
I go one step further. I always tell the patient to bring all the bottles of medicines in at each appointment. This way I can spot any discrepancy in the strength and dosage of each medicine and corrct it timely.

3.Get the results of any test or procedure. Ask when and how will you get the results of tests or procedures. Call your doctor for the results if you don't hear from him or her in a reasonable time. This way you will prevent a potential medical error by alerting your doctor to look for the results. Once in a while the doctor never receive the result of the test/procedure and does not have a good tracking system to make sure to receive all test results. A lot of this kind of error is due to human error,such as misfiing or machine down.

4.Talk to your doctor about which hospital is best for your health needs. In general,you would prefer to be cared for in a hospital where your doctor is on staff. The reason is that your doctor knows your condition better than any other member of your health care team while you are in the hospital.

5.Make sure you understand what wil happen if you need surgery. Make sure you,your doctor, and your surgeon all agree on exactly what will be done during the operation.
Ask your doctor,"who will manage my care when I am in the hospital?"
Ask your surgeon: What,Where,When,Why,How?

What exactly you will be doing?
What time of the day and what day of the week will the operation be done? Avoid late in the day or friday for major elective surgery.
How long the operation will usually take?
What will happen if "I refuses or delay the proposed surgery?"
How can I feel after surgery?
When will you(the surgeon) see me after surgery? Avoid an elective operation if your surgeon will leave town the next day and leave the postoprative care to another surgeon? Your operating surgeon will be in the best position to reoperate on you due to unforeseeable complication.

In conclusion,speak up,and you will be able to help reduce medical eror for yourself.