Archive: Patient Safety

The increasing use of checklists to reduce mistakes during surgery has not always been welcome. There has been criticism that the checklists are oversimplified techniques that have a minimal effect on surgical safety. However, a new study finds that the…

Wiping or bathing patients with antibacterial wipes that have been soaked in chlorhexidine may help prevent or reduce the risk of deadly hospital-required MRSA infections. According to new research, patients who were washed down using washcloths soaked with chlorhexidine had…

A new study may cast doubt on a common belief that hospital errors rise in July, when many medical residents and fellows start work. The study found that the phenomenon known as the “July Effect” has minimal or negligible influence…

With the focus on reducing infections, surgical errors and other medical mistakes, hospitals are not paying enough attention to doctors who report being overburdened and stressed by their workloads. As a result, these doctors find themselves unable to pay enough…

When supervising nurses follow the safety instructions that they give subordinates and when unit nurses feel comfortable admitting mistakes, the risk of hospital medical errors falls. That’s the finding of a new study that probes how care providers experience a…

Most people would consider it a freak accident for a surgeon to leave a surgical instrument in patient’s body or to operate on the wrong body part. But as Seattle medical malpractice attorneys know, such medical mistakes occur far too…

An estimated 1.3 million people every year suffer injuries from medication errors. These errors include the wrong dose, the wrong drug, and the wrong route of administration. Administration of the wrong drug accounts for 41 percent, or the highest number,…

It’s clear to our team of Seattle medical malpractice attorneys that a combination of prevention efforts and error-mitigating strategies can reduce the rate of medical mistakes in our hospitals. A new initiative spearheaded by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University…

A recent medical study has found that surgery patients with postoperative complications are the most likely to be readmitted within 30 days of discharge. The study, published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, may help hospitals adopt…

In a horrifying mistake, a nurse in Ohio mistakenly flushed a kidney that was ready for transplant into a hospital waste-collection system. The case, which has medical malpractice implications, has staggered the medical community across the country and  raised questions…