Evaluation in Public Health: Assessing and Preventing Medical Errors

This essay provides an evaluation of safety in public health, addressing the critical issue of medical errors and their prevention. It begins by highlighting the alarming statistics of deaths caused by medical errors, surpassing fatalities from AIDS, breast cancer, and motor vehicle accidents. The essay identifies key reasons for unsafe healthcare practices, including adverse events from improper drug prescriptions, transfusion errors, hospital-acquired infections, and surgical mistakes. It further distinguishes between latent and active errors, emphasizing the role of organizational structure and management decisions in contributing to these errors. The author shares a personal safety activity related to hygiene and suggests enhancing healthcare professionals' skills as a crucial improvement strategy. The essay concludes that human errors are the primary cause of healthcare system failures but stresses that these errors are preventable through effective strategies. Desklib offers this essay as a study resource, along with a wide array of solved assignments and past papers to aid students.

Running head: EVALUATION IN PUBLIC HEALTH
Evaluation in Public Health
Name of the Student:
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Estimates by the experts have revealed that around 98 thousand people die from the medical
errors that occur in the hospitals. The number is even more in comparison to the people that die
from the AIDS, breast cancer and motor vehicle accident. To err is Human here breaks the
silence regarding the facts that are associated with the medical errors (Donaldson, Corrigan &
Kohn, 2000).
The major reasons cited in the report that our healthcare is not safe are: adverse events
arising from the improper drug prescription, transfusion errors, hospital-acquired infections,
mistaken identity, pressure ulcers, burns, ulcers, falls, surgical injuries and wrong-site surgery,
administration of the improper drugs, failure to administer the drug that was previously
prescribed (Donaldson, Corrigan & Kohn, 2000).
The causes for the medical errors as per the report are: latent and the active errors- these
errors occur at the frontline operator level, most of the errors occur and the effects are
immediately felt. This is also called the sharp end; the latent errors do not occur at the operator
level, whereas it includes the poor structure of the organization, bad management decisions,
faulty maintenance, incorrect installation (Donaldson, Corrigan & Kohn, 2000).
The safety activity that has been undertaken by me in my work is the hygiene. Majority
of the infection and the infectious diseases spread due to the lack of hygiene. This can be
effectively managed through hygiene.
The improvement activity that can improve the safety in the healthcare setting is the increase of
skills in the healthcare. The more a health profession is skilled, the less the chance of an
occurrence of errors in the healthcare. Skills come handy when performing complex work in the
healthcare and can effectively reduce the medical errors (Slipicevic & Masic, 2012).

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From the above study, it can be concluded that the errors in the healthcare system occur mostly
due to the human errors. The errors are however are preventable through effective strategies.

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References
Donaldson, M. S., Corrigan, J. M., & Kohn, L. T. (Eds.). (2000). To err is human: building a
safer health system (Vol. 6). National Academies Press.
Slipicevic, O., & Masic, I. (2012). Management knowledge and skills required in the health care
system of the federation Bosnia and Herzegovina. Materia socio-medica, 24(2), 106.

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