by Julia Beirut

Created on: August 02, 2008   Last Updated: August 07, 2008

Never leave a beloved relative alone in the hospital. Should something unusual occur the patient, who may be too sick to understand what is going on, needs a loved one there to handle the situation. Hospital errors resulting in serious injury or death to the patient are far too common.

Also, every state must commence mandatory reporting of "never" events. A never event is a medical mistake that never should have happened. Sometimes families are never informed of the mistake and the cause of death is left very vague. This is why it is crucial to have someone with the patient at all times.

Secrecy reigns in too many hospitals. When hospitals are not required to report "never" mistakes they are sometimes never made public. Future patients will not be able to truly gauge safety levels at the hospital because they will not have the true facts about deadly medical mistakes at the facility. If mistakes are not reported the state cannot analyze how the mistake happened and institute a change to ensure that mistake never happens again.

Hospitals today are often overly chaotic places. Nurses and doctors are quite over worked and sleep deprived. Patients may not be checked as often as they should be and medication schedules may sometimes fall by the wayside.

Also, hospitals have crime just like any other place in today's world. Sometimes patients are molested or raped while they are a patient in a hospital. Sometimes patients are confused with someone else and have a procedure they did not need performed.

And all too often patients have the wrong limb operated on. Patients may also receive an
incorrect dosage of medication or may receive the wrong type of blood. Patients may have a toxic reaction to a new drug they are administered. If the nurse is too busy to check on the patient for some time they patient may have a severe complication that is not noticed until too late.

Patients need accurate facts about hospital errors at an institution so they may make an informed decision about whether they want to entrust their medical care to that hospital. And people who are ill are too stressed to wade through complicated documents and statistics about medical errors. Each state must have an easily accessed database about errors at hospital. The database should state the type of error, the complication it caused, and the name of the medical staff member who caused the error. So call your Senators and ask them to demand that all "never" incidents at hospital be reported to the state.

And remember, families must be proactive and work to keep an eye on their relative in the hospital. They may be the one to say: No, don't give the patient Percocet again; it caused a psychotic reaction last night, as I had to say to a nurse a few years ago. Somehow the records were not updated that Percocet should never be administered again. Nursing teams shift regularly and patients do not receive consistent care sometimes. If the nurse had administered the Percocet I would have gotten another middle of the night phone call to go to the hospital immediately.

So I went to the store first thing the next morning, got a very brightly colored piece of poster board and hung a huge sign over the patient's head that said "No Percocet." That sign came in handy that same night when yet another nurse came in with the meds in her hand and again she was about to administer Percocet. Then she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the sign on the wall. I didn't have to say a word; she looked at it said "Oh" and then went out of the room to get a replacement medication.

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