When Medical Students Make Errors, Essay Example

I am responding to an incident that occurred on October 14^th, 2014 in the West Tower, whereby a patient’s spouse falsely accused a resident of making a grievous error that led to severe complications for the patient, who was close to death but did fully recover. In this instance, a team of professionals was responsible for the patient’s care and was not exclusively in the hands of the resident in question. Due to the negative publicity and attention paid to the resident, he was forced into a difficult situation that he could not effectively overcome, in spite of the efforts made by his supervisor.

Patient safety is the responsibility of all persons on staff during a given shift; therefore, events that occur must be examined with all parties to the event as part of the incident report and evaluation. The RISE program, as discussed by Clark (2011), is essential to the discovery of a framework that provides support to residents who face significant adversity in the workplace, even when they are not fully at fault for events that have occurred. This is an important reminder of the need to utilize this type of program to provide residents with support in the event that they are blamed for circumstances for which they are entirely not at fault or for which they had no control. Medical professionals, including students, may make mistakes from time to time, but they are typically a single component of a larger problem that requires further evaluation and support from the surrounding community to restore confidence and to protect employees (Khullar, 2014). Therefore, I recommend that a program such as RISE as referenced in the article entitled “Medical error ‘second victims’ get some help, finally” should be established to support residents and other health professionals to address problems when they are blamed for medical errors that are entirely not attributed to their actions. Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Sincerely,

References

Clark, C. (2013). Medical error ‘second victims’ get some help, finally. Retrieved from http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/print/QUA-288425/Medical-Error-Second-Victims-G…%201/23/2013

Khullar, D. (2014). When medical students make errors. Retrieved from http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/when-medical-students-make-errors/?_r=0