Dutchess County, New York Medical Malpractice Blog

Until late last year, New York State treated a first offense of driving while intoxicated as either a misdemeanor or a simple traffic infraction, depending on the amount of alcohol in the blood. That has changed with "Leandra's Law." Now drunk drivers traveling with children under 16 face much harsher penalties.

The law, officially called the Child Passenger Protection Act, was named for an 11-year-old New York girl killed when a car she was traveling in with friends crashed due to the driver (the mother of a friend) being intoxicated.

It may seem devastating for a student to get a poor grade in school, but it is not a life or death situation. When it comes to grading the quality of care in hospitals, however, the lives of patients, and the potential for injuries or deaths, is literally at stake. Recently the Niagara Health Quality Coalition (NHQC), a Buffalo-based nonprofit organization focused on improving healthcare, published its 2010 New York State Hospital Report Card.

While the new ratings indicate that the quality of care in New York hospitals has generally increased, there is still room for improvement in certain areas and medical facilities.

In today's health care industry, procedural and medication errors rank among the most common and costly of all clinical errors in U.S. hospitals. More than 450,000 medication errors occur every year, costing hospitals an estimated $3.5 billion to $29 billion annually. The chaotic environment that nurses inhabit is riddled with myriad distractions and competing demands.

Interruptions Linked to Clinical Errors

A recent report published by the Archives of Internal Medicine examined the daily routines of nurses in six wards and two major teaching hospitals in Sydney, Australia, over the course of three years. Errors in procedure (such as failing to read a medicine's label or double-check patients' names against their medical charts) and in clinical care (such as administering the wrong drug or dosage) were recorded along with any interruptions that occurred while medications were being given. The study found that nurses were interrupted at least once during more than half of all drug administrations. For each interruption, there was a 12.1 percent increase in procedural errors and a 12.7 percent increase in clinical errors. A startling 74 percent of all administrations were marred by at least one procedural slipup.

Somewhere along the way, it became acceptable, almost expected, that resident doctors should get used to feeling fatigued while they work long shifts in crowded hospitals week after week. While it is uncertain how this practice came to be, or why it is perpetuated with each new class of medical school graduates, patients do not appreciate it.

In a recent survey published in BMC Medicine, a web-based medical journal, an independent research firm asked 1,200 participants how they felt about the long hours newly christened physicians work. 

The maxim "First, do no harm" has been a precept of medical ethics for centuries. Despite this, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that there are at least 2 million hospital-acquired infections each year, and that these lead to approximately 90,000 preventable deaths. In addition, it estimates that medication errors harm more than 1.5 million people annually, with 450,000 of those errors occurring in hospitals. This paints a bleak picture of hospital malpractice. 

Patients must now consider the timing of their hospital stays, according to a recently published study. Medical researchers at the University of California in San Diego, who studied the existence of the "July effect," which is an increase in dangerous medication errors during the month of July, confirmed that it does occur on a regular basis.

July is the month when new medical school graduates begin their hospital residencies, so this may be the main reason that the peak season for medication errors occurs at the same time.