A recent review of medication safety revealed a 9% error rate, of which 50% were significant and 2% potentially fatal. Just think of the significance of that for a moment, perhaps between amending drug charts – for every 500 drug orders written by a doctor, 1 patient could die as a result. […]
Category: Douglas Noble
Douglas Noble on patient safety
Ineffectively communicated clinical information has been estimated to be responsible for up to 10% of all preventable medical errors. Stanton et al, in their recent book on clinical leadership, reveal that 70% of information is communicated non-verbally. […]
Douglas Noble: Patient safety – diagnostic errors
Last week I fell onto an outstretched hand and clinically had an obvious fracture on the ulnar side of my left wrist. Interestingly, the very diligent nurse practitioner who examined me became fixated on my scaphoid – having pushed extraordinarily hard in the anatomical snuffbox and eliciting pain. Scaphoid views were requested and no fracture […]
Douglas Noble: Tales of patient safety from the frontline for junior doctors: incident reporting
The NHS has so far accumulated almost 3 million incident reports, well on the way to being as tall as the British Telecom Tower if they were all piled up one on top of the other. Many significant research studies have identified the main barrier to incident reporting as lack of feedback to the reporter. Sound […]