The Patients Guide to Preventing Medical Errors"
COMING NOVEMBER 2004
Greenwood Publishing Group (Copyright 2004)
www.greenwood.com - Search by author
Moved by disabling and deadly medical errors in hospitals, this book describes the surprising extent of the problem, explains safety issues unknown to most consumers, and offers specific measures patients can take to avoid becoming a statistic.
(PRWEB) May 17, 2004 -- Description:
A nation watched in horror as 17-year-old Jessica Santillian died needlessly after a heart-lung transplant in 2003. She had been given organs with the wrong blood type. That error killed her. It is just one among tens of thousands of less publicized errors that occur in U.S. hospitals each year. Author Berntsen, a veteran of the hospital and health care industry, takes us through the headlines, and the events never publicized, into hospital wards and surgical rooms to see how errors are made causing disability or death. She gives graphic examples of actual events that illustrate the problems cited in a federal Institute of Medicine report revealing medical errors in the hospital cause 44,000 to 98,000 deaths each year. In addition, another large scale study release in July, 2004 from HealthGrades Inc., stated that medical errors may kill as many as 195,000 Americans and cost over 2 billion dollars each year. Those errors include failure to diagnose,surgical complications, medication mistakes, wrong site or side surgery and botched transfusions. Berntsen explains why these are not just human errors with one or two people responsible; they are systems failures that require a major culture change to remedy. And that change, she argues, may not come without action by the very people the medical system is designed to help--patients. She offers clear actions and tips consumers can take to guide people so they are not on the receiving end of a medical error. The book details over 200 tips for improving patient safety.
U.S. hospitals have countless stories of miraculous healing and recovery; the greatest technology, most advanced medicines and best research in the world. On the other hand, we have a system where medical errors bring more than 120 fatalities each day across the country in hospitals. An airline crash causing that many deaths daily would paralyze that industry. But because the deaths and harm are diluted across and deep within the silence of hospitals, it is easier to be complacent. There is, says Berntsen, an urgent need to pause and take inventory, a need for clinicians and consumers to come together as partners for change.
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