Preventing Medical Mistakes

MYFOXNY.COM - The Institute of Medicine says medical errors made in hospitals are estimated to cause 44,000 to 98,000 deaths a year and all of them could have been prevented but doctors are often reluctant to admit when mistakes are made.

There is a new way for doctor and hospitals to learn from mistakes before they even happen.

Dr. Ethan Fried is internal medicine specialist at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. He's also the creator of the near miss registry. It's an online reporting system for near miss medical mistakes.

He says that reporting and learning from near misses can keep them from happening again.

The near miss registry allows doctors to anonymously report details of the mistake, and how it was ultimately corrected, before harming the patient. The goal is to learn what works and what doesn't.

For instance, the registry tracks sound-alike medications that could be mixed up. One reported near miss involved a malaria drug quinine that was almost confused with quinidine a medication used for an irregular heart rhythm.

The concept of near miss reporting began with the airline industry.
The aviation safety reporting system was created in 1976. It collects confidential voluntary reports of close calls from air traffic controllers, flight attendants, and pilots.