Medical Reluctance to Change

Medical errors in the US are noted to take the lives of roughly
98,000 patients a year. Medical mistakes are alarming and seem to be on
the rise.

The number of people that die in the US every year as a result of
medical mistakes is higher than the number of people killed in car
crashes on an annual basis. This is hardly a spectacular record to be
proud of either.

Aside from death as a consequence of errors, injuries resulting from
medical mistakes are even more common, and sadly, don't get reported
that often. In fact, there is a lot of carnage that seems to lie just
below the surface of the medical profession that no one wants to
directly address. You know it's more than "just a problem" when the
Kaiser Family Foundation actually carries out a study on medical
mistakes.

The results of the study were quite interesting and raised a few
eyebrows in the process. There were 1,200 adults involved as well as
800 doctors. Turns out that roughly 35% of the physicians commented
that either they or members of their family had experience with medical
errors. The errors were not of the benign nature either, and resulted
in severe pain, long-term disabilities and death.

The very fact that doctors were the victim of other doctors and
medical personnel should have awoken a few people. In fact, the Kaiser
study did collect data that pointed to the medical community being
unwilling to change to make a difference. This of course, left medical
malpractice attorneys on the leading edge of demanding change in the
medical system.

It's interesting that taking legal action against a doctor would
seem to be the only solution to get any real changes made within the
system; however, this makes much more sense when put into perspective.
Most physicians are relatively indifferent to regulating themselves
and/or making changes to procedures to avoid mistakes. Now that's a
chilling thought in itself.

Oddly, doctors also seem resistant to trying built-in system checks,
such as taking a pharmacist on rounds or cutting back the number of
hours a resident has to work. This is odd because these things would
make a big difference in addressing the issue of fatigue, a primary
cause of medical errors.

In the meantime, the other option appears to be suing for redress of
a medical error and perhaps forcing the medical community to begin to
police itself.

Deborah Barron is a Sacramento business lawyer, Sacramento employment lawyer, and Sacramento winery lawyer in California. To learn more, visit Lawbarron.com.