Medical mistakes: To err is human

Human error experts estimate that everyone makes three or four mistakes a day. Yet, it is not acceptable for patients to be harmed by the healthcare system that is supposed to offer healing and comfort. However, patient safety has been difficult to achieve due to long standing beliefs that when errors occur individuals must be blamed or punished.

Medical errors can be defined as the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended or the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim.

Many medical errors do not result from individual recklessness or the actions of a particular group but faulty systems, processes and conditions that lead people to make mistakes or fail to prevent them.

Thus, mistakes can best be prevented by designing the health system at all levels to make it safer--to make it harder for people to do something wrong and easier for them to do it right.

In fact, error should be seen as the inevitable companion of the ability of man to simplify complex situations to function. In complex or stressful situations such as healthcare, humans attempt to impose familiar patterns, sometimes imposing orderliness where none exists.

In obstetrics, a specialty fraught with high risk and often unpredictable events, the potential for error and to harm vulnerable patients is high so the need to develop better approaches and a deeper understanding of the root causes of events is essential.

Preventing errors and improving safety for patients requires a systems approach in order to modify the conditions that contribute to errors. Healthcare organisations must develop a systems orientation to patient safety, rather than an orientation that finds and attaches blame to individuals.

They should establish non-punitive environments which leads to increased error reporting hence helps identify potential breakdowns in the health system.

This will help improve safety and show how to handle errors and quality improvement.