Patients aren't the only ones harmed by medical errors, according to a survey released Wednesday that found many doctors who make mistakes and even those who come close suffer stress, sleep problems and loss of confidence.
Job stress related to medical errors potentially could make some doctors prone to depression, quitting or even making additional mistakes, underscoring the need for helping them cope, said Washington University psychologist Amy Waterman, the study's lead author.
Most doctors surveyed said they would have liked counseling or other help after making mistakes, but that hospitals and other health care organizations didn't offer much assistance.
The survey involved 3,171 doctors in St. Louis, Seattle and Canada who answered mailed or e-mailed questionnaires. Most 2,909 of them said they had been involved with a near miss, minor medical error or serious error, which includes mistakes causing permanent or potentially life-threatening harm.
The results appear in the August edition of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, published by an affiliate of The Joint Commission, a hospital regulatory group involved in nationwide efforts to reduce medical errors.
Many of those efforts stem from an influential 1999 report that estimated that at least 44,000 Americans die each year from medical mistakes.
Of surveyed doctors involved in errors, 61 percent said they felt increased anxiety about the potential for future mistakes, 44 percent said they became less confident in their job abilities, 42 percent experienced sleep problems and 42 percent had a loss in job satisfaction.
Only 10 percent said hospitals offered them adequate resources for dealing with mistake-related stress.
Doctors involved in serious errors were most likely to report increased job-related stress. Still, increased stress also was reported by one-third of those involved in near-misses.
Dr. David Jaimovich, chief medical officer for The Joint Commission affiliate in suburban Chicago, said he recalls feeling stressed after a colleague got a decimal point wrong and almost gave a young patient too much medicine. Jaimovich said he and a nurse noticed the error in time but that "the first thing you think of is, 'What if?'"
Another time, he had to treat a child who'd been sickened by an overdose resulting when a colleague calculated the dose based on kilograms rather than the child's weight in pounds.
The child recovered "but we still felt terrible," Jaimovich said. He was not involved in the survey.
Historically, physicians have been looked on as being almost "super human" and when they made mistakes, "they were supposed to bite their lip, suck it up and keep going," Jaimovich said.
He said doctors need self-esteem and optimism to effectively treat patients, and that more openness and coping resources for doctors could lead to improvements that would reduce errors.
| • | Docs suffer stress, sleep problems after mistakes, survey says
Associated Press State & Local Wire, Thursday, July 19, 2007 Byline: Lindsey Tanner, AP Medical Writer |
|---|
| Story also ran in 38 others: CTV.ca (Canada), China Daily (China), Forbes, FOX News, MyFox Memphis (TN), Washington Post, Miami Herald, Wyoming News, Northwest Herald (IL), Arizona Daily Star (AZ), Tuscaloosa News (AL), Philadelphia Daily News (PA), The Ledger (FL), Denver Post, Newsday (NY), Sun-Sentinel.com (FL), Worcester Telegram (MA), Baltimore Sun, San Jose Mercury News (CA), The Olympian (WA), Columbus Ledger-Enquirer (GA), Biloxi Sun Herald (MS), Houston Chronicle, San Luis Obispo Tribune (CA), Contra Costa Times (CA), Seattle Post Intelligencer, Today's SurgiCenter (AZ), KSTP.com (MN), Ocala.com (FL). Ocala.com (FL), kgw.com (OR), MLive.com (MI), ABC7Chicago.com, KTAR.com (AZ), WQAD (IL), WNYT (NY), WKRN (TN), Central Florida News 13 (FL) and WAND (IL) |
|---|
|
Related Information Related Groups:
|