by Cynthia Wall

Created on: August 01, 2008   Last Updated: August 25, 2008

"To err is human," but forgiving death from medical error is not easy to do. Everyone knows that death is inevitable. Will it be cancer, a heart attack, a car accident? Actually, Americans die from hospital errors at the rate of two jumbo jet crashes every three days. We die in numbers greater than the Vietnam War. We die in numbers that are totally preventable.

Whether it is the babies who received overdoses of pediatric heparin, the man who had the wrong leg removed, the diabetic who needed insulin and was given glucose the numbers are staggering. Oregon, the state I live in, is no exception. In March of 2008, Oregon hospitals told a state commission that there had been 24 fatal errors in the year before. Many more hospital errors resulted in illness or injury, sometimes lifelong for the patient.

Left-behind items, mainly sponges are a frequent result of surgery. Incorrect body parts removed are another hazard. Oops, wrong kidney. Not acceptable if it's your own. Staph infections, incorrect medicine dosages, bedsores, and sepsis, all add to the troubling statistics. About 2 million people a year contract hospital-related infections and 90,000 of them die.

You don't even have to be admitted to the hospital to die from lack of care as in the instance of the 49 year old woman who died in an NYC ER waiting room in June. The irony is that America enjoys one of the highest qualities of healthcare technology in the world. We are the country which sends out medical teams to perform life-giving surgeries in third world countries. So, then why are our own patients dying or being maimed at an alarming rate?

Staff shortage, increased resistance to antibiotics, and overworked emergency rooms increase stress on patient safety, but the number one factor which leads to errors is lack of communication. In the case of the babies overdosed on heparin, the similar-looking bottles were not clearly labeled. In the way too many cases of patients who have had the wrong surgeries performed or the wrong body parts removed, a cross-check identification system was not correctly used.

So what's to be done? To their credit, hospitals, spurred on rising costs and unacceptable death rates are making changes. To combat infections, they are using clippers rather than razors, and giving antibiotics right before surgery and stopping them soon after to prevent resistance. 75% of hospitals have now implemented multiple checks on drugs administered to prevent mixups. Only 10% of hospitals are now computerized

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