The U.S. Department of Transportation has deemed October National Pedestrian Safety Month. A review of pedestrian fatalities in recent years reinforces the importance of this awareness effort. The number of pedestrians killed in motor vehicle accidents is markedly on the rise.
According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), more than 6,100 pedestrians were killed in 2020, a nearly 4% increase over the year prior. In 2020, one pedestrian was hit and killed every 81 minutes.
Almost a quarter of all pedestrians who died in a traffic crash in 2020 were ...
Medication errors are preventable yet injure over 1 million patients in the United States every year. One-fourth of those patients experience life-threatening injuries.
These facts come from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to prevent medication errors. ISMP collaborated with the World Health Organization to promote World Patient Safety Day on September 17. The annual one-day observance serves to educate the public on serious medical errors, with a particular emphasis this year on drug administration mistakes.
Over just three days in May, inspectors found thousands of commercial trucks with defective brakes so dangerous they were immediately taken off U.S. roads.
Catastrophic truck crashes can be linked to maintenance issues, such as defective brakes and defective truck tires. The Commercial Vehicle Alliance, a coalition of law enforcement and safety officials focused on making commercial trucking safer, holds an annual event, called International Roadcheck, to stop poorly maintained trucks from hurting others.
This year’s International Roadcheck was held May 17-19 ...
A new report outlines the top allegations in medical malpractice lawsuits involving nurses.
Coverys is a medical malpractice insurance provider. In September it released a report that reviewed thousands of closed medical malpractice claims (“A Nurse’s Crucial Role in Patient Safety: Through the Lens of Malpractice Claims”).
The company reviewed 4,634 closed lawsuits between 2018 and 2021. It found 850 incidents – almost one in five of the lawsuits – had an allegation of medical malpractice involving nurses. While those allegations represented 18% of the lawsuits ...
While fewer people live in rural Missouri compared to the state’s major metropolitan areas, they likely have a greater chance of being victims of a deadly car crash than their big-city counterparts.
Fatal motor vehicle accidents, regardless of location, have increased in recent years. The federal government in August estimated that the number of people killed in car and truck crashes for the first quarter of this year rose 7% compared to the first three months of 2021. That number projects to be the highest number of traffic fatalities in any first quarter in the last 20 years.
In July ...
Commercial truck drivers are prone to sleep apnea. Sleep apnea can lead to dangerously fatigued truck drivers and be catastrophic for others on the road.
Obstructive sleep apnea forces the throat muscles to relax periodically through the night, temporarily blocking a person’s airway. This can stop a person’s breathing for a slight moment and interrupt sleep.
These interruptions can occur hundreds of times a night, leaving a sufferer exhausted the next day.
Half of Commercial Truck Drivers May Have Sleep Apnea
A 2020 study from Virginia Tech University concluded that 49% of ...
According to a leading medical patient safety group, diagnostic errors contribute to the deaths of up to 80,000 patients a year. Another group recently released a list of steps to prevent this serious medical error.
The Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine reports that medical misdiagnoses likely cause more harm to patients than all other medical mistakes - such as surgical errors and drug administration errors - combined. It relays that a third of all medical malpractice lawsuits involving the patient’s death or serious disability allege a diagnostic error.
The most common ...
Camp Lejeune is a U.S. Marine Corps base in North Carolina. It is the site where contaminated water for 30-plus years seriously injured or led to the death of those who served there. Thanks to a new federal law, those individuals or their surviving family members can sue for just compensation for their losses.
Camp Lejeune opened in 1942. Decades later, officials discovered that the base’s drinking water was contaminated by two of the base’s water treatment plants – the Tarawa Terrace water treatment plant and the Hadnot Point water treatment plant.
It was ultimately established ...
Distracted driving is rising on the nation’s roads.
Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT) is a vehicle technology service provider whose stated mission is to make driving safer. In April it released its “2022 Distracted Driving Report,” which concluded that distracted driving is now more prevalent than prior to the pandemic.
Specifically, distracted driving was 30% higher in February 2022 than February 2020. For the purposes of this report, CMT measured distracted driving by the time drivers spent on their cell phone while behind the wheel.
According to CMT, February 2022 was ...
Football coaches often call a time out right before a big play, to make sure they have all the players and plans in place to prevent a serious error in execution. Time outs are also essential in preventing serious surgical errors that can be catastrophic for patients.
Mistakes made during surgery are some of the most dangerous medical errors. They include:
- Operating on the wrong patient
- Operating on the wrong part of the patient’s body (wrong-site surgery)
- Performing the wrong surgical procedure
“Never” Events
Any of these surgical errors can result in life-altering ...
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