Our country has some of the best hospitals in the world, with trained doctors and specialists that treat everything from minor infections to very serious life-threatening illnesses. However, not all patients can be cured, and many people do die in hospitals from natural deaths that cannot be prevented. Even the most highly trained doctors with advanced medical knowledge and tools are unable to save these patients.
Although many patients die of natural causes in Chicago hospitals and other hospitals across the country, a new report from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine suggests there are still many deaths that can and should be prevented by doctors. The report details the frequency of misdiagnoses in hospital intensive care units that lead to patient deaths. The school’s report details some very alarming statistics of hospital negligence that patients and doctors should be aware of.
Researchers analyzed 31 previous studies that were conducted between 1966 and 2011. They found that 28 percent of patients had a misdiagnosis when they died. At least 8 percent of these misdiagnoses may have directly contributed to the patients’ deaths.
Life threatening conditions that are frequently misdiagnosed include pulmonary embolism, strokes, heart attacks, pneumonia and aspergillosis. Misdiagnoses occurred 50 percent more frequently amongst intensive care unit patients compared to general hospital patients. This translates to roughly 40,500 deaths each year in hospital intensive care units from misdiagnoses.
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has focused on efforts to increase patient safety in hospitals throughout the U.S. Researchers hope that this study will illustrate the need for hospitals to develop new strategies to better prevent misdiagnoses.
Some strategies may be to use more tools and checklists to accurately detect medical conditions that are commonly misdiagnosed. New technologies, better teamwork and more effective communication are also areas that may be assessed as a result of this study so that hospital negligence can be reduced, and ultimately, more lives can be saved.
Source: The Atlantic, “The alarming rate of errors in the ICU,” Christine Russell, Aug. 28, 2012
