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Medical Error's

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Medical Error’s
TUI University
BHS-499 Senior Capstone Project Module 5 SLP Professor:

Medical Error’s
I. Introduction: Background and Context of Medical Error’s.
 Preventable medical errors kill more Americans than diabetes, influenza and Alzheimer’s; and if tracked separately, would be the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States. The National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine (IOM) has estimated that 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of preventable medical errors.



Medical Error’s
 II. Importance, Relevance/Extent of Medical Error’s.  There are many types of medical error and they can be classified from minor to major depending on the result of the error.  According to the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), in November of 1999 the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report estimating that as many as 48,000-98,000 patients died as a direct result of medical error in the hospital each year. Patients are always at risk and medical errors may result in: (AHRQ) • A patient inadvertently given the wrong medicine. • A clinician misreading the results of a test. • An elderly woman with ambiguous symptoms (shortness of breath, abdominal pain, and dizziness) whose heart attack is not diagnosed by emergency room staff.

Medical Error’s
 III. Cause of Medical Error’s.
 Some or most of the hospitals around the world are under-funded and using limited funding efficiently could be very difficult task.  Limited funding will result in a hospital that is understaffed; doctors and medical staff would be very busy and overworked due to high patient load.  Adoption to new technologies will be impossible also and patients would not be able to benefit in the advances in health care technologies.  Poor handwriting skills on some of our provider can also lead to wrong medication being filled or wrong test being

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