Statistics provided by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement determine that medical errors that could have been avoided are responsible for a whopping 238,000 deaths in a two year period.
The medical errors that cause these deaths then result in raising our yearly health care costs by billions of dollars.
Almost one million patients are injured each year as a result of medical errors, and nearly one fifth of those people end up dying.
This is an astounding number of deaths and injuries that could have been prevented.
While these numbers have raised a great amount of controversy, very little has been done to implement change in procedure.
Health care workers like doctors and nurses are often overloaded with patients and cases which creates a greater chance of making a mistake.
Patients may feel defenseless and at the mercy of their care providers, but there are a few things that they can do to ensure proper treatment.
By understanding the common mistakes, they can take extra care and caution to protect themselves.
Medication errors could include prescribing the wrong dosage of a drug, not providing enough information about a drugs side effects, or failing to obtain proper medical history regarding drug allergies and current prescriptions.
A doctor may prescribe a drug that commonly interacts dangerously with another medication that the patient was already taking.
Sometimes the expiration date on a medication will be incorrect.
It's up to the patient to remind their physician of the prescriptions they have consumed.
Even going so far as to provide medical history documentation will prove helpful.
Like mentioned before, doctors are inundated with lots of patients on a daily basis.
You can imagine how easily they could get their details mixed up from one person to another.
A physician may not remember exactly which tests had been performed or what medications were prescribed.
As a patient, it would benefit you to come prepared with a list of questions to be sure and ask during your doctor's visit.
Unfortunately, errors are common during surgical procedures.
Sometimes, a communication error may occur leaving the surgeon with incorrect information.
The severity of these mistakes vary from performing the surgery on the wrong site to the wrong person.
Before you go under anesthesia, make sure your doctor is aware of the form they sign which clearly denotes the surgery and the person it is supposed to be performed on.
Mistakes made by pharmacies account for over 30 million medical errors each year.
It may be that your doctor incorrectly wrote down your prescription or that their handwriting was illegible.
A pharmacy might fill a prescription for the wrong drug or dosage.
At hospitals, they may give you the wrong medication on accident too.
You can be proactive as a patient by informing your pharmacist of any other medications you currently take that could interact dangerously with your new drug.
You should even write down the drug and dosage that your doctor recommends for your own reference so you can cross-reference that with what you actually receive from the pharmacy.
Mistakes made in the laboratory are also very common and happen in a variety of different ways such as incorrect samples.
A lab technician may misinterpret the the data provided by the test which can lead to an incorrect diagnosis and treatment.
The same thing is possible by incorrectly reading a CT or MRI scan.
If something in your gut tells you that the test results are incorrect, insist taking another test or getting a second opinion.
These errors made by surgeons, physicians, pharmacists and lab technicians can all result in serious injuries.
You would benefit from taking the initiative to be proactive in your health care by making sure that your health care providers are certain of who you are and your medical history.