NHS GPs are reporting very few of the many thousands of errors they make in treating and diagnosing patients.

GPs are reporting very few of the many thousands of errors they make in treating and diagnosing patients. See Telegraph article. To be honest, I'm very surprised to read that they report any. The GPs who have so badly harmed me have certainly never reported those mistakes. Nor has any other health professional who has harmed me. And I've never personally heard of any healthcare worker reporting their mistakes to anyone. That's one of the reasons they never learn from their mistakes of course.

Danger to patients from poor prescribing by NHS doctors

10% patients are at risk from errors in prescriptions the Telegraph reports. "The mistakes included omitting drugs, wrong doses, not taking account of a patient's allergies, illegible handwriting or ambiguous orders." This dire statistic is attributed to inadequate training.

It beggars belief, doesn't it? - What do working doctors do most of the time? - You're right! - They hand out prescriptions! - Yet they are inadequately trained to do so and are putting the health of thousands of their patients at risk because of this! - And even the trainers themselves (See Professor at Teaching Hospital completely ignorant of the most common side-effects of prednisolone) are insecure in their knowledge of the side-effects of many commonly-prescribed, but potentially very dangerous drugs, including corticosteroids, HRT and antidepressants.

See amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Sodium in foods

The Telegraph reports that a fifth of patients in intensive care are subjected to errors with their medication, according to a study.

Patients in intensive care suffer frequent medicine errors, research finds
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The most frequent mistakes were giving medication at the wrong time, followed by missed doses and administering the wrong dose.

The research involved 113 intensive care units in 27 countries, including the UK.

The team examined errors made with medicines in a 24-hour snapshot.

Of the 1,328 patients in the study, 861 medicine errors affected 441 patients. Seven patients experienced permanent harm as a result of the errors while five died as a direct result.

However the authors warned that because the reports of errors was voluntary it is likely to reflect an underestimate of the real scale of the problem.

The data, published in the British Medical Journal online, showed that heavy workload, stress and general tiredness among staff contributed to a third of all errors."

I can't help thinking that if fewer drugs were prescribed there would be less risk of error.