CRC Press Medical Error and Patient Safety: Human Factors in Medicine

A difficult and recalcitrant phenomenon, medical error causes pervasive and expensive problems in terms of patient injury, ineffective treatment, and rising healthcare costs. Simple heightened awareness can help, but it requires organized, effective remedies and countermeasures that are reasonable, acceptable, and adaptable to see a truly significant drop in the intolerable rate of medical mistakes. Only with better understanding, knowledge, and directed techniques can there be rapid and marked improvement in medical error management discipline. Since medical error is situation specific and involves diverse variables in equipment, environment, and human performance, the correct choice of preventive and corrective techniques is critical. Providing a wealth of useful ideas, concepts, and techniques, Medical Error and Patient Safety: Human Factors in Medicine uses abroad perspective to present more than 500 remedies that can be applied and tailored to your unique circumstances. This detailed review of so many measures enables you to correctly identify needs and undertake appropriate actions to achieve a success that can be measured in avoided injuries, improved healthcare, and reduced cost. Thought provoking and useful, this book considers the potential for error and the possibility for improvement in every aspect of healthcare. After an introduction to general concepts and approaches, it examines vulnerabilities in medical services, including emergency services, healthcare facilities, and infection control. It covers risks in medical devices and product design; human factors such as fatigue and stress; management errors; errors in communication at all levels of the healthcare hierarchy; as well as mistakes in drug delivery including faulty labels and warnings. The authors also compare and contrast several analytical methods, their interpretation, and their translation into a plan of action.