Dangerous medical errors are estimated to be responsible for the death of 250,000 U.S. patients every year. Medication errors represent a common but often serious type of preventable medical error. A new survey shows that almost a third of medical professionals have witnessed one particular type of medication error.
There are several types of medication errors, including:
· Wrong dose
· Medication given to the wrong patient
· Wrong delivery of correct medication
The new survey has to do a group of medications that are delivered by injection – typically syringes and IVs.
The ...
The federal government’s new tool to keep truck drivers on drugs off the road may not be working so well. It took an act of Congress but it finally happened: there now is a way to track commercial truckers who have driven drunk or high on illegal drugs. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rolled out its Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse in January 2020. This is a database that trucking companies and law enforcement can access to see if a trucker has had any drunk or drugged-driving violations.
Fatigued Truck Drivers
Semi-truck drivers under the influence of alcohol or drugs pose ...
When hospital administrators and safety officials search for bacteria that cause dangerous hospital-acquired infections, they should be sure to look down around their feet. Hospital-acquired infections are dangerous, often fatal, medical errors. It is classified as a medical error since the patient is admitted to the hospital infection free, only to suffer from it due to hospital care.
Types of Hospital-Acquired Infections
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlights these common four types of HAIs:
· Central line-associated bloodstream infection – kills ...
Per the federal government’s most recent final statistics, 5,000 people were killed in the United States in commercial truck crashes in 2018. A preliminary accounting of 2019 fatal motor vehicle accidents has this number repeating last year. Why do serious truck crashes and fatal truck accidents continue to hold steady, while total fatal motor vehicle crashes have fallen in recent years? A report issued over the summer provides some insights.
Driver Errors and Big-Rig Crashes
The 2006 federal research, “Large Truck Crash Causation Study,” found driver error the leading ...
Leaving a surgical tool or some other object in the patient following an operation is a serious surgical error that should never happen. But it happens more often than you probably think.
Medical mistakes are a serious health risk and a leading cause of death in the United States by some estimates. Surgical errors are one type of these preventable medical “never events” – labeled as such because they are so serious they should never happen to a patient.
Serious Surgical Mistakes
Unfortunately, retained surgical instruments or RSIs, represent one example of serious mistakes made ...
Safety technology in passenger cars and SUVs has been widely adopted and expanded in recent years. But its effectiveness may ultimately rely on the particular driver using it.
The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, a not-for-profit organization focused on reducing fatal traffic crashes, has this year alone published the findings of three studies looking into the relationship between drivers and advanced safety technology.
Drivers Who Don’t Understand Computerized Technology
The first, released in June, focused on how the driver’s knowledge and understanding of the ...
The dramatic changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic are numerous and exhaustive, felt by virtually all Americans. It has even fueled the growth of a change in our medical care. As a result of coronavirus, telemedicine is now a much more widely adopted norm.
But how safe is telemedicine?
Telehealth is not new. It’s been around for more than a decade, but due to the current inherent health risks of COVID-19, its use has skyrocketed in 2020. The benefits are obvious. The chief being it limits physical interaction and therefore the risk of potentially deadly virus spread.
As more ...
The total number of people in the United States killed in all types of motor vehicle accidents has decreased in recent years. But the number of people who died in crashes with commercial trucks has not.
This month the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released its accounting of fatal traffic accidents for 2019 (“Preview of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities in 2019”). It compares deaths in 2018 and 2019. In 2018 36,835 people died in all manner of traffic accidents. That number fell to 36,096 in 2019, a drop of 2%.
The report breaks down fatal crashes in numerous ...
Traumatic brain injuries are among the most catastrophic injuries a person can suffer. New evidence shows even mild brain injuries may pose long-term, life-changing consequences.
Media attention to traumatic brain injuries has heightened in recent years, largely to sports-related TBIs. No sport has been in this spotlight more than football, be it high school, college or the professional ranks.
The National Football League has been under scrutiny in particular for looking the other way when it comes to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. CTE symptoms in football players ...
Truck drivers caught speeding show there are an alarming number of unsafe commercial truck drivers on the road today, an assertion backed up by hard evidence uncovered over one week earlier this summer.
The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance is a not-for-profit group of law enforcement and transportation safety officials throughout North America. The CVSA’s focus is to make commercial transportation – semi-trucks and motor coaches – safer and the driving public less vulnerable to negligent operators.
In July the group held its annual Operation Safe Driver Week, a highly ...
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