Recently in Kill That Damn Patient Category

Give me a month. Any given month, just one month without a horror story, give me a month in which no one makes a medical error, one month in which we don't hear about some person's horror story at the hands of evil doctors and the henchmen in nurse's outfits.

Chances are you can't, because there aren't any. Medical errors are seemingly inevitable, they have to happen, just like car accidents and farting in public, mistakes happen. They are part and parcel of having healthcare. After all; unlike the airline industry and the people who make the iphone we don't really have a blueprint or a service manual.

This is why I'm using the bible of all medical error literature to date - and the keystone of America's healthcare revolution - to prove my point. The U.S. Institute of Medicine white paper entitled "To Err is Human ...." estimates that between 44,000 and 98,000 people die from medical errors in the US annually. That's more than the people heart attacks and strokes combined kill in Kuwait and is more than those who are killed by breast cancer in the US.

Having said that the study was written in 1999 and the number would probably be three times as high this year if it weren't for the boffins who wrote the document and forced people to follow it.

There's another reason why I chose this study, it's because we have the same problem as the US. We have lots of doctors, lots of hospitals/practices and not enough oversight (three exams make you registered to practice, 2 more make you a specialist in the US and you can do all five without looking at a patient) so I figured their answer would be ours. After all, we've imported everything from ketchup to coffee chains and managed to make them work, might as well do the same for policy; besides we know it works because they've managed to reduce medical errors to about 10% of the original number over ten years.

The study looked into every major medical error, every big lawsuit and settlement and every single post mortem they could find and came up with the following:

• They found that medical errors occur in three stages: failure to diagnose (wrong tests, wrong timing of tests, old and redundant tests), failure in treatment(delay in treatment, lack of drugs, technical error during a procedure) and failure in prevention (lack of patient follow-up, lack of foresight given patients current condition)

• Creating a nationwide program for leadership, research, tools, and protocols to enhance the knowledge base about safety and patient awareness. In other words, integrating administration into day to day healthcare and making it part and parcel of the practice of medicine.

• Developing a nationwide public mandatory reporting system and by encouraging health care organi­zations and practitioners to develop and participate in voluntary reporting systems meaning that you need to report any problems you face without being blamed for them directly and providing the manpower required to piece together the sequence of the events that lead to the problem.

• Providing standards to adhere to and aspire to within each branch of healthcare. As it stands we don't provide doctors with job descriptions when they are hired, only a set of arbitrary rules.

• Putting in place safety systems in health care organizations to ensure safe practices at the delivery level.

The point I'm trying to make with this whole post is the fact that in all of the above not a single doctor/nurse/security guard was beaten, sued or had his license stripped. If anything the strategy outlined tell you to go back and hold yourself accountable for what you've done and find out where you went wrong and how to fix it then share what you've learnt with the people you work with so that the same mistake doesn't happen again.

I am quick to point out however that the study doesn't condone negligence in which someone has made a deliberate error that they should not have (i.e. cutting a nerve because it simplifies the surgery or giving a patient an overdose so that they sleep and leave you alone for the night only to find them not breathing in the morning).

So perhaps the newspaper stories, TV interviews and patient export program may not be quiet as effective (or affective ....still can't tell the difference) as teaching medical students and doctors in training to review medications they've given and procedures they've performed and sharing their experiences with their colleagues.........

Oh well ...I'm not holding my breath...

The Study mentioned can be found on Google books but be for-warned it's about 300 pages long .......

I'd like to thank Hilaliya for letting me post in his website and promise and do solemnly swear not to use words like 'slut', 'prick', 'shit', 'fuck', 'bastard', 'tits', or 'whore', 'hooker', 'slut' (twice ..... apologies ......), 'bitch', 'hoo hoo', 'pee pee' or 'prick.'

It's very hard for us as Kuwaitis and as humans in fact to live without politics and politicians. For one thing we wouldn't have anything to complain about or anyone to blame and lets face it our parents would have very little to do at family gatherings if it weren't for these close-minded, hypocritical, lying, cheating, corrupt and lurid men (and recently women) who we have chosen to represent us and our stake in the country we live in.

Sadly, however as with most things involving money, power and the public eye, politics has become a foray for those of us who are smart - for the most part, some can't write their names yet but it's still early and I doubt that the people who voted for him know the significance of literacy in the modern world - have scrupulous and rather mercurial morals.

So how do we fix our politicians? (And no I do not mean neuter them - although the idea may appeal to some; it is simply not a solution in the civilized world).

How do we make them represent us the way they should and promised? Unlike the cure for cancer, the flying car or cloning, not even Hollywood could come up with an answer...politicians can't be fixed because they didn't get into politics to change things, they got into politics to become famous and gain respect.

And they can't be held accountable because no one can...lets face it, I've never been held accountable for a single unpaid bill or parking ticket and neither have you. We even have people who have been convicted of manslaughter in the US and are living happy k-town-esque lives and we enjoy our freedom to bypass rules, get things done quickly and forget about that speeding ticket.

So what solution could we possible come up with? (Before you ask, truth serum doesn't work)

The answer apparently lies in cleanliness and lemon scented Windex...According to Professor Liljenquist of some University I've never heard of morals are largely dictated by how fresh the place smells....ugh...She compared how likely people were to be charitable in a Windex scented room and in a standard one and found that people were about twice as likely to be charitable and morally bound if you provided them with a clean environment.

But the trouble with that - apart from the fact that it sounds like hogwash - is that knowing the people within our current "Majless," they'll probably end up killing each other for the government tender to provide lemon scented, morally assured freshness in their meeting hall.