ANALYSIS OF MEDICAL ERRORS 2

Analysis of Medical Errors

In the case study, a doctor performs surgery on a patient who does not need one. It all
started with misidentification of the patient. However, this initial misidentification was not the
sole cause of the wrongful surgery. A series of errors including ignoring the objections of the
patient to the procedure, going on with the procedure despite lack of supporting documentation,
and ignoring of multiple warning signs by health care professionals involved in the procedure are
to blame for the eventual surgery that was not required.

It is possible to identify all the errors that led to surgery being performed on a wrong
patient because of data collection and analysis. Thanks to data collected on the patient such as
names of patients, the procedures that they were supposed to undergo, and the times that the
procedures were supposed to be performed it is possible to determine the initial and subsequent
mistakes. Data analysis helps one to understand the sequence of events that led to the wrongful
surgical procedure in a simpler manner. Thus, both data collection and data analysis helps in
understanding not just actions by various staff members that led to the error but also why the
people who made the errors could have made them based on the data that they were handling and
the time of handling it.

In my view, the medical error was avoidable. All that was needed was proper
communication among healthcare professionals involved in the procedure and strict adherence to
the hospital guidelines. For instance, the hospital requires that patients give consent before a
surgical procedure is performed on them. This requirement was not adhered to. Additionally, it
requires that surgical procedures should be accompanied by documentation. This requirement
was also ignored. Having all hospital staff adhere to these rules would have prevented the error.

ANALYSIS OF MEDICAL ERRORS 3
The medical error highlighted in this case study is, unfortunately, relatively common.
Many human errors occur in health care facilities for various reasons. One of them is
understaffing which significantly increases the workload of available healthcare workers
(Hempel et al., 2015). With a heavy workload, it is easy to make errors because people tend to be
less careful under such conditions. A culture of getting things done quickly also contributes to
avoidable human errors (Hempel et al., 2015). In this particularly case study, it seems that there
was a culture of getting things done and done quickly. That explains why there was little effort
by any healthcare professional to make sure that they were doing the right thing.

ANALYSIS OF MEDICAL ERRORS 4

References

Hempel, S., Maggard-Gibbons, M., Nguyen, D. K., Dawes, A. J., Miake-Lye, I., Beroes, J. M., &
Shekelle, P. G. (2015). Wrong-site surgery, retained surgical items, and surgical fires: a
systematic review of surgical never events. JAMA surgery, 150(8), 796-805.