Despite decades of calls for more attention to patient safety in hospitals, people undergoing surgery still have high rates of complications and medical errors, a new study finds. More than a third of patients admitted to the hospital for surgery have adverse events related to their care, and at least 1 in 5 of these complications is the result of medical errors, the researchers found. Studies delving into adverse events and medical errors in hospital settings are few and far between, and each has slightly different methods, so their results aren’t always an apples-to-apples comparison.
But the latest study , which was published Thursday in the BMJ, fits into a pattern of evidence going back decades, suggesting that hospitals haven’t made much progress on patient safety. “It’s pretty disturbing,” said Helen Haskell, an expert who became a reluctant patient safety advocate after her son, Lewis Blackman, died at the age of 15 following complications from surgery to correct a condition called pectus excavatum, or a sunken chest. She wrote an editorial that was published alongside the new study.
A medication her son was given to control pain caused a hole in his digestive tract called a perforated ulcer, which led to internal bleeding, an infection and septic shock. Haskell says she watched as her previously healthy, athletic son deteriorated before her eyes. “We couldn’t get anybody’s attention, and he just died.
He was in agony for 30 hours, and then he died,”.
