ARTICLE: ENT docs admit to medical mistakes

Health Management Technology,  Sept, 2004 

A physician-led survey indicates that nearly half of ear, nose and throat specialists have made a recent medical mistake or are aware of one firsthand.

Dr. David Roberson, Department of Otolaryngology and Communication Disorders at Children's Hospital of Boston, and colleagues sent an anonymous survey to 2,500 members of the American Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and received 466 responses. Of these, 210 physicians--45 percent--said a medical error had occurred in their practices within six months. About one third of these errors caused major injury or harm, and 4 percent were fatal.

Technical errors during medical procedures grabbed the largest share of the mistakes with 19 percent. Medication errors followed closely behind--14 percent--and included missteps like giving patients the wrong dose, administering medication to which a patient was allergic or failing to note contraindications. Another 10 percent included testing mistakes such as physicians ordering incorrect tests or laboratories losing specimens and misinterpreting results. Younger physicians were more likely than their over-50 counterparts to make mistakes.

Roberson and his colleagues suggest that the study underestimates the number of medical errors that occur. Physicians might not be trained to recognize errors and may tend to recall serious mistakes but overlook the minor ones, they noted.

Davis Law Group
2101 Fourth Avenue
Suite 630
Seattle, WA 98121

Toll Free: (800) 883-0265
Phone: (206) 727-4000