[ RadSafe ] Fwd: Medical Incident

[Chris Alston]

Bill

Actually, since the ascendancy of the Internet, I think that we do
hear about most of these events, and more or less in real-time, at
least as they relate to the use of *RAM* in clinical medicine.
Fortunately, the incidence of errors such as this one is very low,
even in diagnostic nuclear medicine, and trending down.  Comparable
errors in therapeutic nuclear medicine are extremely rare.

In  general, and especially in hospitals, and large group practices,
people are working very hard to cut the number of medical errors,
whether in radiology, surgery, the use of medications, etc., to the
bone (as it were).  Increasingly, hospitals have a zero-tolerance
attitude towards medical errors.  The Joint Commission gets tougher
about quality assurance every year.  Besides, most forward-looking
institutions now take pride in working to be as safe a place as
possible for patients.  A lot of this is accomplished through the use
of time-outs at the beginning of procedures, and checklists, similar
to those used by pilots.  The Magnet Nursing program of the ANA has
also, IMHO, contributes greatly to the improvement of care-giving to
patients, and particularly to reducing medical errors.

Cheers
cja

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: William Lipton <doctorbill34 at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 11:13 AM
Subject: [ RadSafe ] Medical Incident
To: radsafe <radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu>Fortunately, the patient
wasn't harmed, other than having to undergo a
repeat test.
What bother's me is:   (1) the frequency of this type of event, and (2) the
lack of any meaningful NRC penalty.  There's no excuse for treating the
wrong patient.  Can these folks even spell "QA"?  The NRC seems to have a
double standard, with medical licensees getting a slap on the wrist for
incidents which would hit a power reactor with a minimum Level 3 violation.
 What's even worse:  The only reason this was reported is that it involved
a NRC license.  What else goes on that we never hear about?