Comments on: Patient safety: who is responsible?

By: Gerald McClinton

Gerald McClinton — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 23:50:17 +0000

Yes while the hospital took the unusual step of apologizing publically there really was no real apology to my family. My mother had her family around her for twenty four hours a day. We were very vigilant and observed her care. While the hospital says it was nobodys fault, still the blame must lie somewhere. The apology was a PR spin. The responsibility lies with the health care professionals that we trust to take care of our loved ones. The rest of the story will soon come out and I would be interrested in seeing whether people still think that the hospital was truly forthcomming with that apology or whether they were forced out with it because of an internal memo that made it public.

Gerald L. McCLinton

By: enoch choi

enoch choi — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 04:48:57 +0000

if you have the option, go to a hospital without “bad staff”. Often, your primary care physician can point out the best hospitall to go for any particular procedure.

the above reccomendations are good for if you don’t have the option to go to a hospital you can trust.

i disagree that patients owe it to” providers to “be the safety net”. If you can’t trust the providers, don’t get your care from them. Patient’s knowledge is limited, and although the above ideas are great, there are plenty more things that can go wrong.

You have to find someone you can trust. And a hospital you can trust.

By: Lucy

Lucy — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 02:53:07 +0000

My personal experience is that staff is often over-worked and under-trained. I learned the hard way as a teenager when my aunt was killed.

Getting to the point, I learned a few valuable lessons from the lawyers. (1) NEVER stay in a hospital by yourself. (2)Make your “sitter” use a clipboard to record each staff entry into the room and what they’re doing. (3) Make the staff show you the bottle to verify correct meds. (4) Keep a dry-erase board on the wall to track when you had what meds, especially useful around shift-change. (5) Request each-n-every time staff wash their hands when they come through the door. (6) Good staff won’t fault you for double-checking, and bad staff needs to be double-checked. IE you won’t offend anyone that doesn’t need offending. (7) Keep a pharmacist number with you. If you get more than one medication, call the pharmacy to confirm that the drugs don’t interact.

Even if you’re just going to the pediatrician to get a shot/vaccine, ask the staff to record the lot number of the vial (which they will not automatically do). Without that lot number, they can’t report or track bad reactions. And, heaven forbid something goes really wrong like seizures and brain damage, the federal benefit-programs won’t pay-out if you don’t have the lot number.

In a way, being agressive about double-checking staff protects them too. I’m sure none of them want the guilt of making a really horrible mistake. In fact, perhaps we owe it to them to be the safety net.