Over medication, under medication, the wrong medication, complications from surgery, as well as infections all contribute to risks involved in being a patient.
Most mistakes made by health care workers usually happen without fatal – or for that matter, much of any -- consequence.
Marina Kinnunen, patient safety specialist at the Patient Safety Association said that there are many reasons behind those preventable deaths at a seminar about health care mistakes on Thursday.
”There are many different people that care for each patient,” Kinnunen said. ”So there are many factors that something could go wrong.”
The most important thing, Kinnunen said, is for health care professionals to establish clear procedures when something does go wrong.
”There are laws about how to investigate traffic accidents, but there is no similar legislation for health care accidents,” Kinnunen said. ”It’s something we should discuss.”
Mistake with medications most common error
The head of the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Petri Volmanen said the most common mistake is when health care givers dole out medication to patients.
”According to a new study,” Volmanen said, ” Errors in medication occur as often as one out of every four times they’re given.”
”If you have, for example, two bottles of medication next to each other, where one of them contain two grams of morphine per millilitre and the other contains 20 grams, then it only takes a single time for it to be a fatal mistake,” Volmanen said.
Actual numbers unclear
There aren’t any official statistics on how many people actually die from medical errors annually, but according to Volmanen the number is somewhere between 700 and 1,500 patients per year.
Volmanen said these statistics aren’t new and that the medical community has long been aware of them. He said that too little money is being spent on researching the area of patient safety.
”There’s a shortage of patient safety experts in Finland,” Volmanen said. ” It’s quite clear that we need more knowledge about how to avoid injury from medical errors.”
Volmanen said that the costly result of medical errors should be enough motivation to spend more on patient safety research.
”About four percent of the health care system’s budget, or about one billion euros annually, goes to care for patients who’ve suffered the consequences of mistakes by health care workers,” Volmanen said.
”It’s as if one of 20 hospitals would be open only to care for victims of health care mistakes,” he said.
Deputy Executive Director of the Finnish Medical Association Hannu Halila concurred that further education of physicians and other health care professionals on patient safety would improve the current situation.
”Even now, we arrange training on patient safety,” Halila said. ”It’s something doctors have to deal with in this life-long education.”
Patients shouldn’t worry - but be vigilant
”You should not rely entirely on your doctor,” Volmanen said. ”As a patient you have to be active (in your treatment),” Volmanen said.
Kinnunen gave an example that it would be a good idea for a patient to question health care givers if, for example, they start giving several daily doses of a medicine that previously was only taken once a day.
”Despite the fact that mistakes do occur,” Halila said, ”I think that patients can trust in the Finnish health care system. It is at a high level internationally.”