Perhaps now doctors will start reporting medical errors.

Recently Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital has released statistics saying that reporting medical errors made during patient care has reduced the occurrence of errors by as much as 50%. Health care officials are using these encouraging numbers to work towards the creation of a province wide registry of medical errors. It is my personal hope that every province (for selfish reasons particularly my own) adopts a similar registry system. Canada isn’t the first country to be suggesting that fixing mistakes might be more effective than covering them up. For years physicians and patients have been working towards full-disclosure policies in the US and the UK.

Understandably this presents an interesting problem for many people. Encouraging numbers may finally be the salve for doctors worried about malpractice litigation and the general public not really wanting to know how frequently our health care professionals mess up.

As someone who was the victim of a medical mistake once I am in full support of full disclosure and more than that, mandatory registries of any and all medical errors. In my case the mistake that was made caused me to live for almost two years with an untreated torn ACL tendon in my knee before I finally found another doctor who took the time to find the problem. My own story is nothing compared to patients who have lost their lives or paid dearly in other ways for medication mix-ups or surgery mishaps. Medical professionals are people, and as scary as that realization may be they make mistakes and often after one mistake they again make the mistake of not reporting the first mishap in a voluntary system. It’s just not quite cutting it. It certainly is understandable as admitting to mistakes that may have endangered a patients life is a scary thing for a doctor worried about losing patients, or even their career.

The fact is, and now there is certifiable proof, admitting medical mistakes improves health care. So why are there still doctors who aren’t doing it? In a study conducted in Iowa last year it was found that while 92% of doctors said they would report mistakes that caused major harm to their patients, only 4% ever did. In an interesting turn in the study it was further found that only 55% of doctors knew how to report medical errors and only 39% knew what kinds of errors to report.

The Montreal Jewish General Hospital has given us a wonderful model and a good source of inspiration. Every hospital in Canada, and in the world, should adopt a similar full disclosure program of mandatory error registries, and make sure their physicians are properly educated about the protocol to follow when medical errors occur so that lives can be saved today and the quality of health care everywhere can be improved tomorrow.

Related posts:

1. Report by the Canadian Heart Health Strategy and Action Plan Preventative health measures seem to be all the rage, and...
2. Canadian Public Health Care is Embarrassing There are few topics that get my blood boiling more...
3. Is it Time to Terminate Governor General Michaëlle Jean’s Employment – or the Entire Position? For the second time, Governor General Michaëlle Jean has acceded...
4. H1N1 Vaccine – Necessary Expenditure or Perhaps People Could Just Learn to WASH Their Hands… Just a Thought… We complain when the government spends money, but we complain...
5. Premier of Newfoundland Danny Williams’ Heart Surgery Means PR Emergency It takes a special kind of political acumens for...

Tags: disclosure, medical error, montreal jewish general hospital

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 1:11 am and is filed under Uncategorized, health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.