Page 4 - Medical Errors News Today

America has an excellent healthcare system that is also prone to medical errors, often because doctors don't listen and patients don't speak up.

The drastic sanctions — coming after inspectors cited Menlo Park in Edison earlier this month for putting some of its residents in “immediate jeopardy” following charges of improper care and abuse — could force a shutdown of a 312-bed nursing home that cares for military veterans and their spouses.

To be an emergency room doctor is to be a professional listener to stories. Each patient presents a story; finding the heart of that story is the doctor's most critical task. More technology, more tests, and more data won't work if doctors get the story wrong.

If health care facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes don't follow patient safety rules set by The Joint Commission (TJC) -; the independent organization responsible for accrediting health care facilities -; they may lose their accreditation, and consequently, lose patients and millions of dollars every year in funding.

Patient safety incidents were already a leading cause of death in Canada. With that crisis converging with the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic, health care is being pushed to a breaking point.

We believe that healthcare leadership's ingrained culture of exceptionalism drives today's profound problem whereby patient satisfaction is low, inefficiency is high, and patient outcomes are poor.

RaDonda Vaught, a former Tennessee nurse convicted of two felonies for a fatal drug error, whose trial became a rallying cry for nurses fearful of the criminalization of medical mistakes, will not be required to spend any time in prison.

In 2011, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education limited first-year resident-physicians' work hours to no more than 16 consecutive hours after studies indicated that longer shifts may increase risk of medical errors and other adverse outcomes.

RaDonda Vaught, a former nurse criminally prosecuted for a fatal drug error in 2017, was convicted of gross neglect of an impaired adult and negligent homicide Friday after a three-day trial that gripped nurses across the country.

It is, as an essay in the American Journal of Nursing declared, "every nurse's nightmare." The reference is to the trial that got underway this week in Nashville...