Patients deserve high-quality care when receiving assistance in a medical environment, such as a hospital, nursing home, or medical office. Unfortunately, this doesn't always happen. In some instances, significant medical errors can occur that have disastrous results, causing the patient's death. Thousands of people will die each year because of medical accidents. Therefore, it's vital to understand the ten most common medical mistakes causing lethal damage and how to avoid them while providing patients with a much safer experience.
#1. Medication Errors
Medication errors are one of the most common causes of medical errors leading to death. When patients diagnosed with specific medical ailments rely on prescription medication to manage or improve their conditions, something as simple as giving them the wrong dosage or administering the wrong medication can have potentially fatal results. The key to reducing these errors is to ensure that nurse leaders are working closely with their peers, developing an easy-to-use system that everyone can rely on when filling and administering medication for patients. In addition, every patient's medication should have clear, visible instructions, including the specific dosage the patient needs, based on several factors, such as age, weight, medical history, and general diagnosis.
#2. Delayed Response to Abnormal Lab Results
Medical professionals, such as doctors and nurses, must respond swiftly when a patient has abnormal lab results, enabling the patient to take immediate action. However, failure to review those lab results within a reasonable time could put the patient at risk of dying. The best way to avoid medical errors like this is for medical staff to keep an open line of communication, charting everything and going over the details of lab results with each patient to keep them well informed.
#3. Improper Diagnosis
An improper diagnosis is another medical accident that can happen to anyone. A medical professional may assume a patient has one condition without requesting further tests and examinations, thus resulting in a misdiagnosis that leads to delayed treatment and possibly even death for those who go untreated for their actual condition for far too long.
#4. Wrong Injections Administered
Unfortunately, not only can medication mishaps occur, but there are times when patients have died due to having the wrong injections administered. You may be wondering how such a drastic mistake could occur. While some would say it's due to improper care, others believe it's as simple as making a mistake when reading medications. In one situation, a nurse in Tennessee injected a patient with vecuronium instead of Versed. Unfortunately, it's believed that she made a manual error while searching for the medication in the system, causing the patient to die. Avoiding tragic situations like this means never attempting to override a potentially faulty system and constantly double-checking everything before administering it to a patient. If not, the repercussions could be deadly.
#5. Failure to Recognize Signs of an Infection
As soon as a medical professional notices a patient exhibiting signs of an infection, it becomes their responsibility to assess the patient and provide a feasible solution, such as additional treatment or prescription antibiotics. However, when a patient gets ignored, and no one is paying attention to them complaining about the symptoms they're experiencing, an infection can go unnoticed and untreated until it gets out of hand. The infection has the potential to spread to other areas of the body, resulting in neglect, which can also lead to a medical malpractice lawsuit.
#6. Major Surgical Mistakes
While some medical accidents can happen in the office and hospital rooms, others occur in the operating room, where patients are the most vulnerable. For example, a surgeon may unintentionally leave an instrument or gauze inside the body, thus resulting in an infection that can lead to death. If a surgeon makes a mistake while in the middle of a procedure, the patient may bleed out, never waking up from the hospital bed. Whenever a surgeon is performing a procedure, the medical staff must take an all-hands-on-deck approach to assist one another and take preventive measures to avoid surgical errors that can cause death.
#7. Delay in Providing the Patient with a Proper Diagnosis
A proper diagnosis can have beneficial effects. If patients don't know what's wrong with them, they can't receive the quality care they need and deserve, which means their condition may only worsen. By the time they're diagnosed, it may be too little too late. Because this can happen, nurses, doctors, and all medical staff must be willing to listen to their patients, keep track of symptoms they're experiencing, and monitor their condition over time to determine if the symptoms are getting worse or better.
#8. Faulty Medical Devices
In some cases, faulty medical devices used on patients can lead to their death, and it's not always due to negligence. Unfortunately, in some cases, these devices may malfunction due to a manufacturing error. For that reason, medical professionals must consciously examine these devices before using them on patients to reduce the risk of causing any harm.
#9. Lack of At-Home Care Instructions
After a surgical procedure or treatment at the hospital, medical professionals should provide clear at-home instructions, letting patients know what to do to keep themselves healthy. In addition, they should mention contacting a medical professional or calling emergency personnel if they experience specific symptoms, such as blood clots or high fevers. Not providing at-home care instruction is negligent and can put patients at risk of dying due to not knowing what to do when they get home. Every medical environment should have a proper protocol that includes providing patients with a printed copy of at-home care instructions while going over the details before the patient heads home.
#10. Discharging the Patient Without Providing an Adequate Level of Care
Not providing a patient with an adequate level of care is another one of the many common causes of medical errors that lead to death. When a patient doesn't receive care or doesn't get the care they need for the specific problems they're experiencing, the situation can worsen and lead to an undiagnosed patient going home, where they may die because the medical staff didn't think there was anything wrong with them. To avoid medical accidents like this, proper testing and scans should be completed to rule out any severe and potentially life-threatening conditions that would put a patient at risk.
Unfortunately, when medical errors occur, these errors can cause a patient's death. However, with quality nurse leadership and proper protocols in place, medical professionals in different workplace environments, such as hospitals, nursing homes, and urgent care centers, can continuously provide high-quality care while mitigating risks that can potentially harm their patients.
