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Medical Errors

This document discusses medical errors in hospitals. It defines medical errors as any behavior or lack of skill that harms a patient. Common causes of errors include overwork, miscommunication of verbal orders, and mistakes by nurses and doctors. Nurses' most common mistakes include giving the wrong medication, while doctors' most common mistake is prescribing the wrong medication. To reduce errors, hospitals should provide regular staff training, ensure adequate staffing to prevent overwork, and improve communication between healthcare providers. The lives of patients are precious, so medical errors should not be tolerated and all efforts must be made to offer safe, high-quality care.

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Farah Hussein
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12 views5 pages

Medical Errors

This document discusses medical errors in hospitals. It defines medical errors as any behavior or lack of skill that harms a patient. Common causes of errors include overwork, miscommunication of verbal orders, and mistakes by nurses and doctors. Nurses' most common mistakes include giving the wrong medication, while doctors' most common mistake is prescribing the wrong medication. To reduce errors, hospitals should provide regular staff training, ensure adequate staffing to prevent overwork, and improve communication between healthcare providers. The lives of patients are precious, so medical errors should not be tolerated and all efforts must be made to offer safe, high-quality care.

Uploaded by

Farah Hussein
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1

University of Jordan
School of Nursing
Professional Writing

Medical errors in hospital

group names:
Farah hussein Alsourakhi 0202551
Bayan Jamal Alnadi 0201739
Omar Mokhlis Hassan 0209410
Hamza Ibrahim Aljayyoussi 0207662
Date of Submission: 2/1/2022
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I. Introduction

II. Definition of medical errors


A. Define medical errors generally
B. JCAHO definition
III. Overwork and its relationship to medical errors
IV. Verbal medical order and its relationship to
medical errors
V. Medical errors committed
A. Nurses' mistakes
B. Doctors' mistakes
VI. How do we reduce errors?
VII. Conclusion
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Medical errors in hospital

Doctors, nurses, and health care providers carry out a noble


and humanitarian mission. They preserve the health of the
patient, relieve their pain, and help them fight and get rid of
their diseases. But mistakes may occur that may be
counterproductive to these noble goals. What are the medical
errors? What are the probable causes of these errors? And how
can they be minimized as much as possible?

We can describe medical errors in many ways. Medical errors


are any behavior and attitudes that may harm the patient,
whether unintentionally or unethically due to lack of skill,
knowledge, and negligence resulting from lack of responsibility,
lack of dedication and loyalty to the profession. It may be in
several ways, such as not completing the necessary treatment,
not administering the necessary treatment, or taking
unnecessary measures that may harm the patient.
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare
Organizations (JCAHO) defines medical errors as "any harm to
the patient as a result of improper, unethical conduct, or
unreasonable lack of skill or negligence by a health care
professional.”
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There are several reasons that may lead to medical errors,


including overwork. It was found that there is a relationship
between overwork and medical errors. The rate of medical
errors for patients who work for 8 hours or less is 1.6%, and for
nurses who work for 12 hours or more; the rate of medical
errors was 6%.

Also, the correct words and pronunciation of medical orders


are important, as it was found that misunderstanding verbal
orders by the recipient is one of the potential causes of medical
errors. Medical errors may arise from the failure of
communication between nurses and doctors and between care
providers.

The mistakes made by nurses include giving medicines


illegally, giving the wrong medicine to the patient, or giving the
medicine late, and not checking the patient's identity and bed
number. Errors made by doctors include incomprehensible
handwriting, incomplete medical order (not writing the correct
medication administration and dosage), or the wrong dosage or
medication. There was a similarity between doctors and nurses,
where the most common mistake among doctors is to give the
wrong medication and the percentage was 32.8%; and the
nurses were giving the wrong medication by 40.7%.
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There were many mistakes made by nurses and doctors, which


could kill the patient, so we must prevent the occurrence of
these mistakes, such as setting up a training program for health
care staff at regular intervals and repeating the training to
prevent the occurrence of these errors. And putting in enough
Workforce to avoid the situation of overwork and exhausting
Caregivers that may cause errors, as well as enhance
communication between medical personnel, encourage them
to take responsibility and raise awareness among them.

Finally, People's lives are precious and important, so we work


with sincerity and dedication and strive to fully do our work
without any mistakes. Medical errors should not be tolerated
and ignored, as they may be killed and painful. We must keep
up with developments in the health sector and study
developments in this science to offer the best we have.

References
Physicians' and nurses' medical errors associated with communication failures - PubMed (nih.gov)

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