Medical Errors :: Health, Miscommunication, Work Loads

In year 2000 Institute of medicine (IOM) reported that around 98,000 people die each year (Kohn, 2000). The main reason for this incident is medical errors. Medical errors cost around $29 billion loss for heath care industry (Slonim, LaFleur, Ahmed, & Joseph, 2003). These medical errors caused people to be more in hospitals, more diagnostic evaluations, un-necessary treatments, and also resulted in many deaths. Medical error is defined as â€Å"failure of planned action to be completed as intended or use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim† (Kohn, 2000). Entering wrong medical information causes adverse effect on drugs and care given to patients. Lack of proper medical record will cause patients to stay more in hospitals, more disability, and more loss for health care industry. Medical errors are considered to be eighth leading cause of deaths in USA (McGowan & Healey, 2009). Of all major departments in health care, one of crucial departments is pediatrics (Kozer, Berkovitch, & Koren, 2006). Pediatric department is one of the key departments in health care sector and comprise of around 10 % of health care industry (McGowan & Healey, 2009). There were many deaths reported in pediatric departments. The medical errors will have more impact on children than in adults due to various reasons. One reason is that most of medicines for children are off label and they don’t have standard doses (Kozer, Berkovitch, & Koren, 2006). Another reason for medical errors is that many doses of medications needs to be adjusted according to child’s weight and body mass. Some medications which are supplied need to be diluted and improper dilatation doses will result in deaths (Kozer, Berkovitch, & Koren). All these medical errors results in abnormal deaths in children. There are various types of medication errors. They are dosing errors which are caused due to improper dosing of medication and tenfold error which are caused due to prescriptions which are ten fold higher or lower in dose than recommended dose (Kozer, Berkovitch, & Koren, 2006). The other types of errors are diagnostic errors which are caused due to delay in diagnostics and error in monitoring test results, treatment errors which are caused due to delay in responding to an illness due to lack of test results and due to other issues like improper system failures and lack of backup plans (McGowan & Healey, 2009). Mostly medical errors are due to increase in work loads, abbreviations misunderstandings, and misinterpretations due to handwriting (Kozer, Berkovitch, & Koren, 2006).