THE ST. Luke’s Medical Center has just launched its Center for Quality and Patient Safety.
Doctor Edgardo R. Cortez, vice president and medical director, said St. Luke’s hoped the center would be the start of a national movement for, as a growing number of people are learning, the hospital, a place for treatment and cure, could also be one of the most dangerous places.
Cortez cited statistics from the United States showing that some 100,000 people die every year due to hospital errors.
You have probably read some of the horror stories about medical errors. Recently, Hollywood actor Dennis Quaid and his wife received a sizeable settlement from a well-known hospital after their newborn twins almost died after being given the wrong dosage of medication.
The wife of another Hollywood actor/director died of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome when she was infected with the AIDS-causing human immune deficiency virus from a blood transfusion.
Big numbers
Dr. Alejandro Dizon, chief quality officer, said that while individual errors in a hospital may seem insignificant, when taken together they could add up to a pretty alarming figure.
St. Luke’s program will cover all those obvious areas where problems can occur—wrong medication, sloppy procedure, unsterile environment, mistaken identities (a patient undergoes the wrong procedure or is given the wrong medicine because there has been a mix-up in patients’ charts), among others.
In fact, they are even retraining staff to write legibly to make sure patients can read prescriptions.
St. Luke’s initiative is certainly laudable.
However, as Dizon stressed, they can only do so much. Patients, who pay for their services, should just be as concerned about their safety and the quality of care they are getting.
Patient’s responsibility
But treatment and healing are two-way processes. While physicians are undoubtedly experts, they still need their patients’ help to give the best kind of care. Patients have to learn everything there is to know about their diseases and they must try to understand these by asking their doctors all the questions in their minds. A good physician who really cares for his patient will be willing to discuss the case openly and honestly.
St. Luke’s even encourages patients to seek a second, a third or as many opinions as they want, Dizon said.
And just because there are now all sorts of complicated and highly technical tests using expensive and very sensitive equipment, it does not mean that the doctor knows everything there is to know about a patient. Patients still have to tell the doctor, and be very honest about it, what exactly it is they feel. If a medication causes nausea or dizziness or some other discomfort, if it does not provide relief, if there is pain, the doctor has to be told. The drug may not be the right one for a patient and has to be changed.
There are many other things patients have to do to make sure they are getting quality and the right kind of care from their doctor and their hospital. St. Luke’s has put together the most important things in a brochure that is available at the St. Luke’s Center for Quality and Patient Safety.
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