6/17/2013
One of the most important lessons I have learned from the past three days is the urgency in which we need to act to bring ethics back to the forefront of healthcare systems. Too often the best interests of the patients and their families are put behind financial, legal, and personal factors. It may never be possible to prevent every error, but we have a professional duty to take responsibility and put patients’ and their families’ needs first in the aftermath of a medical error. I wish to express a sincere thank-you to Carole for your courage in sharing your personal story so that future healthcare professionals can learn from it. I hope that each of us will continue this conversation of patient safety to make a difference in patient care when we return to our institutions.
Today I also learned about the concept of anchoring. Anchoring is a practice in which a person’s perspective is biased by the first information given. The tendency of anchoring increases significantly when one becomes tired, fatigued or distracted by any other human factors. The heartbreaking tragedy we have seen in Carole’s and Helen’s stories stems from anchoring bias. As a caregiver, we have to be mindful and avoid bias when dealing with patients. However, after several talks with several medical students and nursing students, I learned that many residents may have to work up to 80 hours/week on average and many times they have to work more than 8 hours in a shift (please correct me if I am wrong). I wonder whether it is possible for one to maintain a clear mind with an objective perspective under these working conditions. Should there be a change to reduce such long working hours in residency programs?
6/19/2013
Yesterday, I went shopping and talked to a cashier in a souvenir shop in downtown Telluride. After I asked her whether she offered any discount for Telluride scientists, we started having an interesting conversation. On being asked what I was there for, I shared with her that I was in a 4-day summer school with medical students, nursing students, and pharmacy students to learn more about patient safety and how to improve healthcare quality. She then told me that since we were learning about patient safety, we should make sure that nursing school teaches nurses how to take blood sample of a patient without pricking her patient five or six times. She suggested that doctors should invent some kind of X-ray imaging on a patient’s arm so that they can test the blood without pricking a patient. We both laughed and I said, “Yeah, why not?” Such an invention may be possible in the future and it would increase the ability to deliver high quality patient care. I thought this is an interesting anecdote of those outside the medical profession on how they perceive those inside.