Patient Safety Must be Inculcated in Medical School Students
Every year, more than 98,000 people are killed because of medical errors. Those numbers have not decreased significantly, although there has been a dip from the use of checklists before surgeries. Patient safety practices can be enhanced if we invest in a new generation of doctors who are as committed to patient safety.
The New York Times published a report last month which discussed how more and more medical schools are introducing patient safety subjects in their medical curriculum. In 2008, a study by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education reported that appropriately 2/3rd of medical schools reported including patient safety as part of the curriculum for their students. However, another study conducted by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement found that 4 out of 5 students felt that their exposure to patient safety had been “fair” at best.
There is much that medical schools can do to inculcate better patient safety practices in order to prevent medical errors and minimize error rates. However, for many medical schools, patient safety has been low on the priority. One of the reasons for this is that a medical course includes large amounts of material that have to be covered before the program ends. Concepts of patient safety seem to lose out to seemingly more important medical topics.
There are indications that this attitude is changing. One medical school now invites parents of victims of medical errors to speak to students about their experiences. Another school allows students to participate in debriefing sessions with doctors whose job is to respond quickly to emergencies. Also very encouraging is the fact that more and more medical school students, who see the national discussion over medical errors, are willing to speak up and broach this hitherto forbidden subject.
Developing a stronger awareness of the hundreds of things can go wrong before, during and after a procedure, and establishing means to prevent these, must begin right in medical school. We hope more schools realize this, and make time for patient safety discussions in their programs.
The Indiana medical malpractice lawyers at Theodoros & Rooth represent persons injured because of surgical errors, emergency room errors, failure to diagnose , misdiagnoses, and other forms of medical negligence.
