Job fears behind failure to report medical errors

AL AIN // Healthcare workers fail to report or cover up medical errors because they fear losing their jobs, safety experts have claimed.

But systems were being set up to mitigate human error and ensure mistakes were spotted before they affected patients, said Dr Krishnan Sankaranarayanan, senior safety officer at Tawam Hospital in Al Ain.

“Health care relies on the human element to a great extent with people changing shifts all the time and handing duties over to another person. Errors can happen due to fatigue, being overworked, miscommunication or other issues,” he said.

Errors could vary from giving a patient the wrong medication, to operating on the wrong body part.

“Since patients are provided many medicines during the course of the day, most errors occur while supplying medication,” said Dr Sankaranarayanan.

“When an error is obvious, patients can complain to authorities, several times mistakes are not detected at the time, such as when wrong medication is administered to a patient.

“Patient safety is a new subject in this part of the world, although healthcare institutes are working to ensure patients have no reason to complain.”

In the UAE, there are three kinds of claims patients could file, said Stephen Ballantine, head of medical malpractice at Galadari and Associates law firm.

The first was if there had been a failure of execution, such as if the doctor had operated on the wrong body part. Secondly a patient could claim that the healthcare professional failed to act or diagnose a disease. Thirdly, a patient could complain if they felt dissatisfied or if there had been a breakdown of communication between the patient and the authorities.

“The cases of breakdown in communication are on the rise,” said Mr Ballantine.

Hospitals in UAE are working to ensure that there are systems in place to catch such errors.

“In the last 10 years, there has been a rise in regulations to ensure that medical errors are reduced,” said Mr Ballantine. “In accredited hospitals, two nurses run a check on medicines independently before administering them.”

Also, there is a system of checking the medication via a bar code to ensure the correct medicine is given to the patient at the right time.

Dr Sankaranarayanan said there should be an approach that “encourages transparency”. That, he said, would “help build a safe and fair culture in hospitals”.