BOOK Review From: OUTCRY Magazine, Aug. 2003
101 Ways to Prevent Medical Errors
by Yinka
Vidal
The
new book is based on an ongoing project study on how to prevent or fix medical errors. The
project started four years ago, working with different institutions and project locations
across the country. It outlines effective processes of identifying medical errors and ways
to design solutions. Developing checks and balances along the route of designing a
process-line is one of the points of emphasis throughout the book.
The
author discusses many stories of implementation processes, what works, what fails and the
deterrence created by human behavior. He discusses many success stories and many
challenges along the way of fixing medical errors in various incidents in different
hospitals. He indicates that the biggest challenge to overcome while working on this
project and on the national campaign to prevent medical errors is the human resistance to
change. A large part of the book discusses the ongoing struggles within the health-care
field on how to fix medical errors.
All
health-care professionals and administrative officials will find this book very useful as
it also discusses how barriers can be removed along the way to achieve project success.
The book discusses some of the old problems leading to medical errors and how most of
these situations can be addressed using action task force committee members with special
training.
Vidal
stresses throughout the book and in progress reports on this study that medical errors are
not created by bad medicine or bad people. Medical errors are created by simple systemic
failures due to the lack of effective checks and balances along the process-line of
patient care.
This
book addresses many problems associated with root cause analysis, solution design and the
processes of solution implementation. The report in this book is collected based on
research study from those working directly with patients on the frontline of patient care.
If you are working in the nursing, laboratory or quality improvement department of the
hospital, this book is required reading. It gives you many tools to achieve your
objectives.
“The best patient is an
awake, aware, alert patient who wants to wisely participate in his or her health and
healing. This book insightfully teaches how to do so.”
- Mark Victor
Hansen, Co-creator, #1 New York Times best-selling series Chicken Soup for the Soulâ