Download or read book Why Even Good Doctors Make Mistakes written by Jack Hasson and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2005-06-28 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, life expectancy in the United States is expected to reach 78 years, a marked increase when compared with life expectancy in 1935, which was just 62 years. Progess in medical knowledge and applied technologies have advanced quickly, yet medical errors have caused health care cost to skyrocket, medical litigation to increase significantly, and disharmony between doctors and patients to become a major issue. Dr. Jack Hasson, MD, a patholgist since 1951, shares his collection of actual case and studies spanning nearly fifty years. In chronological sequence Dr. Hasson presents anecdotes that were often used as instructive yet popular teaching material for medical students because of their exciting and unexpected outcomes, which resulted in emotional responses in the students. The anecdotes provide an introduction to medicine but also highlight the problems that often lead to the wrong diagnosis and illustrate why immense voids in knowledge cause errors as well as unexpected acts of nature that often dictate how a certain disease will behave in a particular patient. Why Even Good Doctors Make Mistakes will help you better understand both disease and the realities of medical practice, ultimately enhancing your appreciation for not only the capabilities of doctors, but also their limitations.
Download or read book When We Do Harm written by Danielle Ofri, MD and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medical mistakes are more pervasive than we think. How can we improve outcomes? An acclaimed MD’s rich stories and research explore patient safety. Patients enter the medical system with faith that they will receive the best care possible, so when things go wrong, it’s a profound and painful breach. Medical science has made enormous strides in decreasing mortality and suffering, but there’s no doubt that treatment can also cause harm, a significant portion of which is preventable. In When We Do Harm, practicing physician and acclaimed author Danielle Ofri places the issues of medical error and patient safety front and center in our national healthcare conversation. Drawing on current research, professional experience, and extensive interviews with nurses, physicians, administrators, researchers, patients, and families, Dr. Ofri explores the diagnostic, systemic, and cognitive causes of medical error. She advocates for strategic use of concrete safety interventions such as checklists and improvements to the electronic medical record, but focuses on the full-scale cultural and cognitive shifts required to make a meaningful dent in medical error. Woven throughout the book are the powerfully human stories that Dr. Ofri is renowned for. The errors she dissects range from the hardly noticeable missteps to the harrowing medical cataclysms. While our healthcare system is—and always will be—imperfect, Dr. Ofri argues that it is possible to minimize preventable harms, and that this should be the galvanizing issue of current medical discourse.
Download or read book Top Screwups Doctors Make and How to Avoid Them written by Joe Graedon and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A primary care doctor is skeptical of his patient’s concerns. A hospital nurse or intern is unaware of a drug’s potential side effects. A physician makes the most “common” diagnosis while overlooking the signs of a rarer and more serious illness, and the patient doesn’t see the necessary specialist until it’s too late. A pharmacist dispenses the wrong drug and a patient dies as a result. Sadly, these kinds of mistakes happen all the time. Each year, 6.1 million Americans are harmed by diagnostic mistakes, drug disasters, and medical treatments. A decade ago, the Institute of Medicine estimated that up to 98,000 people died in hospitals each year from preventable medical errors. And new research from the University of Utah, HealthGrades of Denver, and elsewhere suggests the toll is much higher. Patient advocates and bestselling authors Joe and Teresa Graedon came face-to-face with the tragic consequences of doctors’ screwups when Joe’s mother died in Duke Hospital—one of the best in the world—due to a disastrous series of entirely preventable errors. In Top Screwups Doctors Make and How to Avoid Them, the Graedons expose the most common medical mistakes, from doctor’s offices and hospitals to the pharmacy counters and nursing homes. Patients across the country shared their riveting horror stories, and doctors recounted the disastrous—and sometimes deadly—consequences of their colleagues’ oversights and errors. While many patients feel vulnerable and dependent on their health care providers, this book is a startling wake-up call to how wrong doctors can be. The good news is that we can protect ourselves, and our loved ones, by being educated and vigilant medical consumers. The Graedons give patients the specific, practical steps they need to take to ensure their safety: the questions to ask a specialist before getting a final diagnosis, tips for promoting good communication with your doctor, presurgery checklists, how to avoid deadly drug interactions, and much more. Whether you’re sick or healthy, young or old, a parent of a young child, or caring for an elderly loved one, Top Screwups Doctors Make and How to Avoid Them is an eye-opening look at the medical mistakes that can truly affect any of us—and an empowering guide that explains what we can do about it.
Download or read book How Doctors Think written by Jerome Groopman and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2008-03-12 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds. In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrong—with catastrophic consequences. In this myth-shattering book, Jerome Groopman pinpoints the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make. Groopman explores why doctors err and shows when and how they can—with our help—avoid snap judgments, embrace uncertainty, communicate effectively, and deploy other skills that can profoundly impact our health. This book is the first to describe in detail the warning signs of erroneous medical thinking and reveal how new technologies may actually hinder accurate diagnoses. How Doctors Think offers direct, intelligent questions patients can ask their doctors to help them get back on track. Groopman draws on a wealth of research, extensive interviews with some of the country’s best doctors, and his own experiences as a doctor and as a patient. He has learned many of the lessons in this book the hard way, from his own mistakes and from errors his doctors made in treating his own debilitating medical problems. How Doctors Think reveals a profound new view of twenty-first-century medical practice, giving doctors and patients the vital information they need to make better judgments together.
Download or read book Complications written by Atul Gawande and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2003-04-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant and courageous doctor reveals, in gripping accounts of true cases, the power and limits of modern medicine. Sometimes in medicine the only way to know what is truly going on in a patient is to operate, to look inside with one's own eyes. This book is exploratory surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science not in its idealized form but as it actually is -- complicated, perplexing, and profoundly human. Atul Gawande offers an unflinching view from the scalpel's edge, where science is ambiguous, information is limited, the stakes are high, yet decisions must be made. In dramatic and revealing stories of patients and doctors, he explores how deadly mistakes occur and why good surgeons go bad. He also shows us what happens when medicine comes up against the inexplicable: an architect with incapacitating back pain for which there is no physical cause; a young woman with nausea that won't go away; a television newscaster whose blushing is so severe that she cannot do her job. Gawande offers a richly detailed portrait of the people and the science, even as he tackles the paradoxes and imperfections inherent in caring for human lives. At once tough-minded and humane, Complications is a new kind of medical writing, nuanced and lucid, unafraid to confront the conflicts and uncertainties that lie at the heart of modern medicine, yet always alive to the possibilities of wisdom in this extraordinary endeavor. Complications is a 2002 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.
Download or read book Medical Errors and Medical Narcissism written by John D. Banja and published by Jones & Bartlett Learning. This book was released on 2004 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the concept of medical narcissism the author examines both the psychological and biological factors involved when a physician decides not to disclose when a medical error has occurred.
Download or read book To Err Is Human written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2000-03-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experts estimate that as many as 98,000 people die in any given year from medical errors that occur in hospitals. That's more than die from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDSâ€"three causes that receive far more public attention. Indeed, more people die annually from medication errors than from workplace injuries. Add the financial cost to the human tragedy, and medical error easily rises to the top ranks of urgent, widespread public problems. To Err Is Human breaks the silence that has surrounded medical errors and their consequenceâ€"but not by pointing fingers at caring health care professionals who make honest mistakes. After all, to err is human. Instead, this book sets forth a national agendaâ€"with state and local implicationsâ€"for reducing medical errors and improving patient safety through the design of a safer health system. This volume reveals the often startling statistics of medical error and the disparity between the incidence of error and public perception of it, given many patients' expectations that the medical profession always performs perfectly. A careful examination is made of how the surrounding forces of legislation, regulation, and market activity influence the quality of care provided by health care organizations and then looks at their handling of medical mistakes. Using a detailed case study, the book reviews the current understanding of why these mistakes happen. A key theme is that legitimate liability concerns discourage reporting of errorsâ€"which begs the question, "How can we learn from our mistakes?" Balancing regulatory versus market-based initiatives and public versus private efforts, the Institute of Medicine presents wide-ranging recommendations for improving patient safety, in the areas of leadership, improved data collection and analysis, and development of effective systems at the level of direct patient care. To Err Is Human asserts that the problem is not bad people in health careâ€"it is that good people are working in bad systems that need to be made safer. Comprehensive and straightforward, this book offers a clear prescription for raising the level of patient safety in American health care. It also explains how patients themselves can influence the quality of care that they receive once they check into the hospital. This book will be vitally important to federal, state, and local health policy makers and regulators, health professional licensing officials, hospital administrators, medical educators and students, health caregivers, health journalists, patient advocatesâ€"as well as patients themselves. First in a series of publications from the Quality of Health Care in America, a project initiated by the Institute of Medicine
Download or read book Reconstructing Medical Practice written by Christine Jorm and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconstructing Medical Practice examines how doctors see health care and their place in it, why they remain in medicine and why they are limited in their ability to lead change in the current system. Doctors are beset by doubts and feel rejected by systems where they should be leaders - some see their role as 'flog[ging] a derelict system to get the last breath of workability out ... for their patients'. Others simply turn away. Rigorous studies carried out at large public teaching hospitals in Australia found that doctors were reluctant to increase safety in the wider health system, despite making every effort for their 'own' patients. Doctors' self-esteem was found to be delicate due to the uncertain nature of their work; colleagues provide the support doctors need to deliver good care. However, these essential relationships and their cherished connections with patients have disadvantages: reducing doctors' ability to admit to error. On top of this, senior doctors predict a future bereft of professional values - one where medicine is 'just a job'. While the loss of professional identity introduces new risks for patients and doctors, the repercussions of the more self-serving attitudes of younger doctors are unknown. Reconstructing Medical Practice concludes that regulation, despite its recent proliferation, is a clumsy and limited approach to ensuring good care. It presents original and much-needed ideas for ways to rebuild the critical relationship between doctors and the system. By better valuing communicative interactions and workplace relationships, safe and satisfying medical practice can be reconstructed.
Download or read book Unaccountable written by Marty Makary and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller “Every once in a while a book comes along that rocks the foundations of an established order that's seriously in need of being shaken. The modern American hospital is that establishment and Unaccountable is that book.”-Shannon Brownlee, author of Overtreated Dr. Marty Makary is co-developer of the life-saving checklist outlined in Atul Gawande's bestselling The Checklist Manifesto. As a busy surgeon who has worked in many of the best hospitals in the nation, he can testify to the amazing power of modern medicine to cure. But he's also been a witness to a medical culture that routinely leaves surgical sponges inside patients, amputates the wrong limbs, and overdoses children because of sloppy handwriting. Over the last ten years, neither error rates nor costs have come down, despite scientific progress and efforts to curb expenses. Why? To patients, the healthcare system is a black box. Doctors and hospitals are unaccountable, and the lack of transparency leaves both bad doctors and systemic flaws unchecked. Patients need to know more of what healthcare workers know, so they can make informed choices. Accountability in healthcare would expose dangerous doctors, reward good performance, and force positive change nationally, using the power of the free market. Unaccountable is a powerful, no-nonsense, non-partisan diagnosis for healing our hospitals and reforming our broken healthcare system.
Download or read book Avoiding Medical Errors written by Robert M. Fox and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-04-08 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, written by a lawyer and a doctor explains to everyday readers ways in which they can avoid death and injury caused by medical mistakes. It may be shocking to learn that preventable errors by doctor and hospital personnel are a leading cause of death and injury in the United States—perhaps even exceeding the annual deaths caused by heart disease and cancer. But avoiding these mistakes is possible, and the rules found in this book will arm readers against the careless errors that lead to such deaths and injuries. From hospitals to doctors’ offices, medical professionals are overwhelmed, overtired, even overworked and mistakes are sometimes unavoidable even with the best safety measures in place. A resident at the end of a 36-hour on-call stint may forget to wash her hands before performing a surgical procedure. A chart may be mismarked. Medications may be inaccurately listed. Test results may be inaccurately interpreted. But patients are in a position to help themselves and their medical caregivers to avoid these mistakes by taking more active and attentive part in their own healthcare. By being aware of the most common errors, patients can look for ways to ask questions, review information, even examine test results with a critical eye toward their own health and specific situations. Robert Fox and Chris Landon show them how.
Download or read book Improving Diagnosis in Health Care written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-12-29 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Getting the right diagnosis is a key aspect of health care - it provides an explanation of a patient's health problem and informs subsequent health care decisions. The diagnostic process is a complex, collaborative activity that involves clinical reasoning and information gathering to determine a patient's health problem. According to Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, diagnostic errors-inaccurate or delayed diagnoses-persist throughout all settings of care and continue to harm an unacceptable number of patients. It is likely that most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, sometimes with devastating consequences. Diagnostic errors may cause harm to patients by preventing or delaying appropriate treatment, providing unnecessary or harmful treatment, or resulting in psychological or financial repercussions. The committee concluded that improving the diagnostic process is not only possible, but also represents a moral, professional, and public health imperative. Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, a continuation of the landmark Institute of Medicine reports To Err Is Human (2000) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), finds that diagnosis-and, in particular, the occurrence of diagnostic errorsâ€"has been largely unappreciated in efforts to improve the quality and safety of health care. Without a dedicated focus on improving diagnosis, diagnostic errors will likely worsen as the delivery of health care and the diagnostic process continue to increase in complexity. Just as the diagnostic process is a collaborative activity, improving diagnosis will require collaboration and a widespread commitment to change among health care professionals, health care organizations, patients and their families, researchers, and policy makers. The recommendations of Improving Diagnosis in Health Care contribute to the growing momentum for change in this crucial area of health care quality and safety.
Download or read book The Green Pharmacy written by James A. Duke and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 1999-07-30 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thousands of safe, natural remedies lie untapped in jungles, forests and herbal gardens throughout the world. Now, in Green Pharmacy by James A. Duke (with illustrations by Peggy Kessler Duke), America's foremost authority on medicinal plants and herbs shares his knowledge of these hidden reserves of healing power. * For Arthritis: A new, all-natural remedy that can cut pain in half. * For Back Pain: A fruit that has anti-inflammatory properties to produce long-term relief. * For Your Heart: An herb that opens up clogged arteries and lowers blood pressure, with none of the side effects of prescription drugs. * For High Cholesterol: A tasty grain that has three times more cholesterol-lowering power than oat bran. * For Migraines: An herb that has the power to eliminate the blurred vision and debilitating pain of these monster headaches. * For Mood Swings: A common food that shares the power of Prozac to boost the brain's level of "feel-good" serotonin. * For Osteoporosis: A prime plant source of calcium that vastly enhances protection against bone depletion. * For Wrinkles: An herbal lotion that has the skin-clearing, wrinkle-reversing power of alpha hydroxy acid but costs only pennies. And much more-- over 120 conditions in all!
Download or read book The Good Doctor written by Kenneth Brigham and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes a good doctor? It's not what you think. A doctor willing to face their own uncertainty in the face of illness and treatment might just be the best medicine. Too often we choose the wrong doctor for the wrong reasons. It doesn't have to be that way. In The Good Doctor, Ken Brigham, MD, and Michael M.E. Johns, MD, argue that we need to change the way we think about health care if we want to be the healthiest we can be. Counterintuitive as it may seem, uncertainty is integral to medicine, and you want a doctor who knows that: someone who sees you as the unique case you are, someone who knows that data isn't everything, someone who is able to change her mind as the information changes. For too long we've clung to the myth of the infallible doctor--one who assuredly tells us this is what's wrong and here is how I will cure you--and our health has suffered for it. Brigham and Johns propose a new model of medicine, one that is comfortable with ambiguity and that centers on an equal partnership between patient and doctor. Uncertainty, properly embraced, opens a new universe of possibilities.
Download or read book What Doctors Feel written by Danielle Ofri, MD and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating journey into the heart and mind of a physician” that explores the doctor-patient relationship, the flaws in our health care system, and how doctors’ emotions impact medical care (Boston Globe) While much has been written about the minds and methods of the medical professionals who save our lives, precious little has been said about their emotions. Physicians are assumed to be objective, rational beings, easily able to detach as they guide patients and families through some of life’s most challenging moments. But understanding doctors’ emotional responses to the life-and-death dramas of everyday practice can make all the difference on giving and getting the best medical care. Digging deep into the lives of doctors, Dr. Danielle Ofri examines the daunting range of emotions—shame, anger, empathy, frustration, hope, pride, occasionally despair, and sometimes even love—that permeate the contemporary doctor-patient connection. Drawing on scientific studies, including some surprising research, Dr. Ofri offers up an unflinching look at the impact of emotions on health care. Dr. Ofri takes us into the swirling heart of patient care, telling stories of caregivers caught up and occasionally torn down by the whirlwind life of doctoring. She admits to the humiliation of an error that nearly killed one of her patients. She mourns when a beloved patient is denied a heart transplant. She tells the riveting stories of an intern traumatized when she is forced to let a newborn die in her arms, and of a doctor whose daily glass of wine to handle the frustrations of the ER escalates into a destructive addiction. Ofri also reveals that doctors cope through gallows humor, find hope in impossible situations, and surrender to ecstatic happiness when they triumph over illness.
Download or read book Smart Health Choices written by Les Irwig and published by Judy Irwig. This book was released on 2008 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every day we make decisions about our health - some big and some small. What we eat, how we live and even where we live can affect our health. But how can we be sure that the advice we are given about these important matters is right for us? This book will provide you with the right tools for assessing health advice.
Download or read book Why We Make Mistakes written by Joseph T. Hallinan and published by Crown. This book was released on 2009-02-17 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We forget our passwords. We pay too much to go to the gym. We think we’d be happier if we lived in California (we wouldn’t), and we think we should stick with our first answer on tests (we shouldn’t). Why do we make mistakes? And could we do a little better? We human beings have design flaws. Our eyes play tricks on us, our stories change in the retelling, and most of us are fairly sure we’re way above average. In Why We Make Mistakes, journalist Joseph T. Hallinan sets out to explore the captivating science of human error—how we think, see, remember, and forget, and how this sets us up for wholly irresistible mistakes. In his quest to understand our imperfections, Hallinan delves into psychology, neuroscience, and economics, with forays into aviation, consumer behavior, geography, football, stock picking, and more. He discovers that some of the same qualities that make us efficient also make us error prone. We learn to move rapidly through the world, quickly recognizing patterns—but overlooking details. Which is why thirteen-year-old boys discover errors that NASA scientists miss—and why you can’t find the beer in your refrigerator. Why We Make Mistakes is enlivened by real-life stories—of weathermen whose predictions are uncannily accurate and a witness who sent an innocent man to jail—and offers valuable advice, such as how to remember where you’ve hidden something important. You’ll learn why multitasking is a bad idea, why men make errors women don’t, and why most people think San Diego is west of Reno (it’s not). Why We Make Mistakes will open your eyes to the reasons behind your mistakes—and have you vowing to do better the next time.
Download or read book In Search of Medicine s Moral Compass written by Rob Tenery and published by BrownBooks.ORM. This book was released on 2011-11-11 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A veteran physician shares his opinion on the state of health care in America and what needs to be done to change it. In an age where uncertainty rules the day, Dr. Rob Tenery explains how health care has evolved into a $2.6 trillion enterprise. He does this with carefully researched histories and a series of challenging and thought-provoking commentaries on the most important issues of the day. Dr. Tenery’s book focuses on a time when doctors and patients worked together to determine the best course of treatment—solutions now being ceded to large corporations and the federal government. He relates, as only a physician can, the challenges, fulfillment, and ethical dilemmas of caring for patients and making the best decisions for their health and well-being. Whether contemplating what doctors can do when nothing can be done, or thinking about the state of the medical profession, his insights are based on real-life experiences with his patients and colleagues. Dr. Tenery brings a perspective and a set of values gained from his father and grandfather, who, together with the author, represent over a century of caring for patients. This book gives you the opportunity to step into the shoes of a dedicated third-generation physician and to see the changing nature of health and medical care through his eyes. This physician of over thirty-seven years is sharing his collected writing for a better understanding of why medicine is a profession and not just another business.
