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Let’s ask Jo! She’ll know!
Q: Whenever the conversation turns to health care, it almost always ends with disturbing stories about medical mistakes. Why is this happening so often?
A: I'm not throwing my hands up, but when we access health care frequently and it is more complex, there are greater opportunities for errors to occur. Utilization has increased dramatically, along with health care technology, provider burnout and dangerous multi-tasking. For example, physicians and nurses spend 25 to 50 percent of their time inputting data. That's a concentration killer. Patient safety is an issue bureaucrats have consistently ignored for decades, so we have almost no useful data on how often it really happens. But based on many other sources—and common sense—we know a lot about prevention.
Patient safety is no accident.
As a consumer or advocate, you cannot take your eye off the ball. Recognize that potentially harmful mistakes can arise from accessing Electronic Health Records (patient misidentification), hands-on care (health care-acquired infections) or diagnosing (distractions and lack of time), to highlight just a few. When you are mindful of what's happening, you add a layer of oversight. Offering multiple patient identifiers, requiring hand washing, providing an up-to-date medical history and getting second opinions come to mind. Be proactive, be engaged, be empowered—and question stuff!
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