Doctors who aren’t directly involved in patient safety issues often sail through their careers without much awareness of how commonly errors and malpractice infect hospitals, clinics and medical offices. Then they become patients, and suddenly their world is turned upside down. Itzhak Brook, M.D., has been a doctor for more than 40 years. He is….
Continue ReadingArchives for May 2011
Diabetes drug Avandia will be gone from retail shelves by November
Diabetes medication Avandia will be pulled from pharmacy shelves in November because it poses a major risk of heart attack, the Food and Drug Administration has announced. Under a new program effective Nov. 18, 2011, only certified physicians will be allowed to prescribe the drug, and then only to patients who’ve been informed of the….
Continue ReadingDoes a Drug Really Work? Why Numbers, Not Testimonials, Matter
Testimonials from satisfied customers sell products. Every marketer knows that. But testimonials from patients are the wrong way to decide if a drug deserves an endorsement worth billions in sales from the Food and Drug Administration. Why? Because, as a Virginia cancer doctor explains in a new article, the testimonials from happy cancer patients mask….
Continue ReadingMalpractice lawsuits are down while injuries are up
While evidence continues to mount of the high cost of preventable medical errors, and the failure of safety efforts to put much of a dent in the rising tide of injuries from health care, here’s a curious new statistic: Malpractice lawsuit payments are at their lowest level in 20 years. That figure comes from Public….
Continue ReadingShowing docs price of tests cuts unnecessary testing
Making physicians aware of the cost of regular lab tests cuts the daily bill for those tests by as much as 27%, according to a new study. The study, published in the May issue of Archives of Surgery, first monitored the baseline daily per-patient cost for two common lab tests – complete blood count and….
Continue ReadingDoctor Superiority Is Dangerous to Patient Health
Ask any nurse for stories about dealing with doctors, and you will hear that American hospitals and other health care institutions have a long way to go before civility and teamwork rule the day. Why is that a malpractice prevention issue? Nurses have a vital role as a check and balance to catch mistakes and….
Continue ReadingDoctors downplay patients’ reports of medication side effects
Physicians, researchers, drug makers and regulators should pay more attention to patients’ first-hand reports of their symptoms while they take medicines because their information could uncover safety problems and guide treatment and research, a cancer researcher says. In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Ethan Basch, an oncologist who treats men….
Continue ReadingMany gastroenterologists overdiagnose Barrett’s Esophagus
When you see a specialist, you expect to hear from an expert who will diagnose your condition and then recommend the appropriate treatment. But that may not be the case, especially if you’re dealing with gastroenterologists and your symptoms appear to resemble those of Barrett’s Esophagus, a condition in which the lining of the esophagus….
Continue Reading‘Superbug’ deaths spur probe into prostate biopsies
As an increasing number of patients being tested for prostate cancer contract potentially lethal drug-resistant infections, some physicians are rethinking their approach to prostate cancer screening. Several studies released in the past year reveal that infectious complications from biopsies have more than doubled in less than a decade, and a growing percentage of patients who….
Continue ReadingHospital scrubs: “Fashionable” but a suspected source of infection
You see them walking around hospitals, and sometimes even on the street: health care workers wearing surgical “scrubs.” It’s something of a fashion statement, but also a potential carrier of infections, yet no one has really carefully studied the problem to know for sure. The old adage among patient safety advocates that “you can’t improve….
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