Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Doctors and Errors


Today in class, we discussed why doctors are held to such high standards especially in regards to when they make mistakes.  For me, this comes down to the fact that we trust doctors with our health and life.  We believe that after all their rigorous years of schooling, they will know what to do, and not make a careless mistake.  While I realize that doctors are humans and they do make mistakes, sometimes these mistakes are not that minor.   Like the examples from class, there are the horror stories of the wrong limb being amputated or receiving the wrong dosage of a painkiller.  These are major errors since they leave significant and visible repercussions, sometimes even death.  Furthermore, it seems that it is much easier to pinpoint a medical error to a specific time and person.  If my healthy foot was amputated, I would be able to track it and blame the doctor in charge of the surgery.  Professor Jennings asked us to briefly think how medical errors compare and contrast to other fields.   I find this comparison to other fields, especially education, to be extremely interesting.  Our education has a very big impact on our lives.  If a person graduates from high school, he or she has spent at least 12 years of formalized schooling.  Let’s say that while this person was in kindergarten, his teacher labeled him as a trouble, hyper child.  Because of his antsy behavior, he couldn’t focus and learn.  However, the teacher did not try other methods or to accommodate his learning style or see what other issues may be affecting his behavior.  The teacher talks to the other teachers and word spreads that this student is a troublemaker.  The student will most likely start to think he is in fact a troublemaker and won’t make an effort to change, if none of his teachers give him the care and attention he needs.  Now the child carries this label with him, which will affect the education he receives.  Now, it might seem easy to pinpoint this error in teaching back to his kindergarten teacher, but none of his other teachers tried to work with him and change this label.  As a result, it is more difficult to pinpoint this error, which has long-term consequences.  When doctors make mistakes, it seems so detrimental since the errors are easier to pinpoint and the effects are more visible.   

7 comments:

  1. I too found the comparison of the errors of doctors and teachers to be very interesting. I do agree that the errors that doctors make are viewed as being much more shocking and detrimental to the patient than errors made by those in other professions. I also agree that society trusts physicians and expect them to always know best. However, I think that a doctor's errors are just as difficult to pinpoint as say, a teacher's errors. In Angela's example, it is true that the root of a troubled child's problems would be hard to find, but I believe that a doctor's error would be just as hard to pinpoint. For example, in the case of the heparin overdose we discussed in class, that error could have been the "error" of the doctor, the nurse, the pharmacy, or even a system as a whole.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with Emily wholeheartedly. Although patients tend to place blame on the doctors who seem to be of greatest authority, there are so many different professionals that interact with a patient--especially in hospitals and post-op environments that allow for various things to go wrong. An issue I have is that when a patient sits down with a doctor to have a consultation before a surgery, often a large amount of statistics are thrown around but it seems doctors tend to omit how often various slip ups occur NOT necessarily as a result of the doctor's mistake or malpractice but a result of the professionals in the op and post-op environments. Ultimately, no medical practitioner--nurse or doctor--is perfect and mistakes happen, but it seems far fewer would occur if patients were given adequate information before their experience. For example, doctors should provide patients not only with their own positive statistics ("oh this surgery has had profoundly wonderful outcomes with 98% of our patients!") but to be honest about the entire post-op environment, nurses, doctors, and PCAs/PCTs alike.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I found Professor Jennings suggestion to compare medical errors to other professions as particularly compelling. In particular, I was thinking about how lawyers can fail to adequately defend clients in court who may in the end be wrongly convicted of a crime. While it was mentioned in class that there is rarely punishment within the medical profession, isn't there also a lack of punishment among, for example, the legal career for failing to do a proper job? Their cases can at times be a life or death situation if an individual is facing death row and a lawyer fails to investigate claims that could substantiate his client's innocence. Does that lawyer face any repercussions?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I found the discussion of why we hold doctors to such high standards interesting. As brought up in class, when it comes to the medical field, patients lives are in the hands of doctors. We trust our doctors and expect that they would not make careless mistakes. Additionally, it was also mentioned in class that health care is extremely expensive, and patients have some level of expectation that they are receiving the care that they are paying a large amount of money for. While I agree with these points, I do not agree that it is easier to pinpoint the blame to a doctor than it is in the case that Angela mentions concerning the troublemaker child. In the example brought up in class with the overdose, the doctors, while they should have double checked, is not the only person at fault. In this scenario, it is difficult to pinpoint who is at fault. In order to ensure that these mistakes are not made, I do not think that it is just up to the doctor, but the entire system as a whole. This includes checks at every level -- pharmacies, nurses, doctors should work together to ensure that patients receive proper care in order to avoid these mistakes that seem to patients as easy to avoid.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I agree with the statements above, but I had a problem with the idea that the high expense of healthcare makes people not expect mistakes. I don't know firsthand, but it seems that legal expenses are also usually quite high - but maybe legal problems don't come up as often for people as medical ones do.

    Additionally, the comparison to education also captured my attention - it is interesting that "mistakes" in education that could affect a child for the rest of his life are never compared to the mistakes doctors make, when they could potentially be more damaging. I think this is because, of course, doctors' mistakes cause bodily harm or disfigurement immediately, and the mistakes of teachers are unnoticeable, and are not sensational enough to grab people's attention like the amputation of the wrong leg is. I think this in turn feeds into the high standards we hold doctors to - because their mistakes cost people's lives, and sound terrible to the public. Regardless of whose fault it is (nurse, pharmacy, etc.), since the patient is firstly under the care of the doctor, it is he who is blamed, and the system still stays at large. I think that once more people understand that the "system" is what often sets up individual doctors up for mistakes, there can be more action taken to have more checks for what happens behind-the-scene, not just what happens bedside. However I think this may be harder than it sounds, as people generally want to be able to blame something concrete, and remove something concrete from the system (a doctor), rather than an amorphous idea (the system) - especially when the mistake caused a death. Maybe a little less passionate finger-pointing would allow for change in the medical system!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I agree that it was very interesting to examine the reason why doctor are held to such a high standard. I think that it is for a good reason because we trust them to a very high extent. We basically put our lives in their hands whether they are just figuring out what type of sickness we have or they are prescribing medications or they are operating on us. We are trusting them to make the right decisions that are best for us and our general health. However, I do think that it is necessary to take note of additional professional fields and understand that they should be held at high standards as well. Yes, sometimes our lives are held in the hands of a doctor, but in the hands of other professionals, are held aspects about our life that could become life or death. For example, if a lawyer makes a mistake during a case that makes the defendant lose, they could very well be paying millions of dollars to the person they lost to. This alone could cause them to become bankrupt or lose most of their assets. It could effect their family, their job, and a slew of other things in many negative ways. Additionally, with the teacher example that Angela gave, a teacher constantly talking down on a student could cause that student to think he is worthless, that he will never get anywhere in life, that he has a hard time paying attention and that he will not do well in school no matter what. These things could cause that student to end up failing in life in the long run because of the low standards he was held at all throughout his schooling. With these examples in mind, I believe that it is important to realize that although doctors are held at such high standard, that other professionals deserve to and should be held at standards just as high as those of doctors.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I agree that it was very interesting to examine the reason why doctor are held to such a high standard. I think that it is for a good reason because we trust them to a very high extent. We basically put our lives in their hands whether they are just figuring out what type of sickness we have or they are prescribing medications or they are operating on us. We are trusting them to make the right decisions that are best for us and our general health. However, I do think that it is necessary to take note of additional professional fields and understand that they should be held at high standards as well. Yes, sometimes our lvies are held in the hands of a doctor, but in the hands of other professionals, are held aspects about our life that could become life or death. For example, if a lawyer makes a mistake during a case that makes the defendant lose, they could very well be paying millions of dollars to the person they lost to. This alone could cause them to become bankrupt or lose most of their assets. It could effect their family, their job, and a slew of other things in many negative ways. Additionally, with the teacher example that Angela gave, a teacher constantly talking down on a student could cause that student to think he is worthless, that he will never get anywhere in life, that he has a hard time paying attention and that he will not do well in school no matter what. These things could cause that student to end up failing in life in the long run because of the low standards he was held at all throughout his schooling. With these examples in mind, I believe that it is important to realize that although doctors are held at such high standard, that other professionals deserve to and should be held at standards just as high as those of doctors.

    ReplyDelete