Health Care Management Discussion, Essay Example

Adverse events, medical errors, and near misses are all serious concerns that can affect patient outcomes. Each term describes a specific type of issue that can occur during treatment, although the severity of an individual event is closely related to the category in which it belongs. However, a lesser problem can evolve to move into more troublesome territory if it is not promptly addressed upon discovery (Friedman et al., 2008).

An adverse event is the development of an unintentional negative impact on the patient’s health due to a preventable error in the health care management process. For example, the use of morphine on a patient with a known allergy to the drug would undoubtedly result in a severe reaction that may endanger their life. Such a mistake would be considered an adverse event.

Errors can occur that do not directly impact the well-being of the patient, though they certainly have the potential to do so. When this type of a mistake happens, it is known as a near miss. Despite the lack of harm to the patient, a near miss can be a frightening prospect because of the potential for serious consequences. For example, a doctor writes a prescription but leaves a zero off the dosage by mistake. The pharmacist notices this oddity and phones the doctor to verify the order which is then corrected. The patient did not receive the wrong medication, no harm was caused, and so this incident would be referred to as a near miss.

Medical errors are similar to near misses because they do not cause harm to the patient. However, unlike the potentially damaging near miss, a medical error would not immediately result in patient distress if it was missed. An example of a medical error would be to enter an inaccurate piece of routine information like blood pressure. One false recording of this type will not typically cause harm for the patient, and therefore would be considered a medical error (Ioannidis, 2011).

References

Friedman, S. M., Provan, D., Moore, S., & Hanneman, K. (2008). Errors, near misses and adverse events in the emergency department: what can patients tell us. CJEM, 10(5), 421-7.

Ioannidis, J. P. (2011). Facing up to medical error. The Lancet, 377(9764), 457-458.