13 September 2024 (Friday) - Another Rant

Here’s something from Medical Laboratory Observer. An article about mistakes in diagnostic error.
According to ECRI (an American healthcare provider) out of a thousand errors reviewed:
 

• Nearly 70 percent of errors occurred during the testing process – including when healthcare staff are ordering, collecting, processing, obtaining results, or communicating results.
  
  
• Twelve percent of errors occurred in the monitoring and follow-up phase; with nearly nine percent during the referral and consultation phase.
   
• Of errors that occurred during testing, more than 23 percent were a result of a technical or processing error, like the misuse of testing equipment, a poorly processed specimen, or a clinician lacking the proper skill to conduct the test
   
• Another 20 percent of testing errors were a result of mixed-up samples, mislabeled specimens, and tests performed on the wrong patient.

 
Without wishing to belittle the article it is the sort of thing that boils my piss (to be frank). Very quick to point out mistakes, but rather thin on details of exactly what these mistakes were, their severity, and offering absolutely nothing in the way of lessons learned from those mistakes.
 
I’m left wondering why this article was even published; if not to knock healthcare. It's prompted me to include a new label category for the articles I put on here.