They can happen at any level of the health care system, from your local clinic and pharmacy to hospitals and long-term care facilities. Medical mistakes or “preventable adverse events” can lead to injury, permanent disability and even death — and some experts argue there’s more we should be doing to stop them.
How common is the problem? Exact numbers are hard to pin down: it depends on who is doing the reporting (patients versus staff, for instance) and how an adverse event is defined (for example, not all mistakes are considered to be preventable). Different institutions have different reporting structures, and researchers often focus on a particular institution like a hospital or long-term care facility rather than the problem as a whole.
However, to give you a sense of the scope of this issue, a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that around 15 per cent of patients report errors each year. The World Health Organization (WHO) says there is a 1 in 3 chance a patient will experience harm somewhere in the healthcare system — though some smaller studies peg this number as high as 50 per cent. Roughly 1 in 10 patients in developed countries suffers harm while receiving hospital care.
How many people die from mistakes that could have been avoided? According to the Canadian Patient Safety Institute (SPSI), between 9,000-24,000 Canadians die from preventable adverse events each year. In the U.S., that number reaches an estimated 180,000 people. Unofficially, medical errors are a top cause of death in industrialized countries despite all the advantages we have like sanitary conditions and skilled staff.
And here’s another scary thought: a recent study out of the U.S. suggest that numbers still aren’t going down. A six year study examining 10 North Carolina hospitals published in the Nov. 25 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine showed that error rates didn’t decline despite new policies and educational campaigns. (However, critics argue that all new measures take time to show progress.)
In fact, medical errors could be increasing. According to an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the complexity of care we’re now seeing plus a breakdown in communications may be leading to more mistakes. Furthermore, overworked doctors and staff are increasingly suffering from burnout, and doctor-patient relationships are suffering. (Read the full editorial here.)
