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U.S. Medical “System” Creates Errors

At the May 4, 2004 opening session of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists annual meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dr. Lucian Leape of the Harvard School of Public Health in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reported that American doctors annually write 28 million erroneous prescriptions – the wrong drug, the wrong dose or the wrong patient.

The reason? Leape, the world’s leading expert on medical errors, says it’s because “the system,” the U.S. medical system, is designed in such a way that it promotes errors.

For example, while limits have been put on the number of hours medical residents are on call, no limits have been put on the hours attending physicians are allowed to work. As a result, senior doctors can be affected by the same lack of sleep that affects the medical judgment and abilities of young doctors.

Another problem is that doctors are still being trained to think by and for themselves rather than working with a team including nurses and residents. In fact, research is currently being conducted to see if a team-based approach can reduce the error rate as well as translate into cost savings.

Preliminary data from that study indicates that 43% of medical malpractice claims at one Boston area hospital could have been prevented by a team approach.

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