In 2017, 1,153 cases of “serious adverse events linked to care” were reported in France by healthcare professionals. How to reduce the number of medical errors committed each year in the Emergency Department?
According to a new study carried out in six emergency reception services in France (five in Paris and one in Grenoble) and published this Monday, April 23, 2018 in the specialist journal JAMA Internal Medicine, systematic meetings between doctors would be the solution.
To come to this conclusion, the researchers looked at 1,680 patient charts. They thus observed that the rate of medical errors was lower (6.4%) in the group of patients for whom “systematic and regular cross-checking meetings” were organized.
Three meetings of approximately 10 minutes per day
These meetings brought together the doctors in pairs and took place 3 times a day for about 10 minutes, in a dedicated space. Concretely, for the doctor it is a question of “describing the files of the patients for whom he is responsible. It’s a bit like the transmissions we make at the end of a shift, ”explains Dr. Freund, emergency physician at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris and head of the study.
The rate of medical errors climbed to 10.7% (or + 4.3 points) when these meetings did not take place. About half of these medical errors consisted of “near miss”, that is to say errors without major consequences: “a fracture poorly seen on the radio, a patient who takes too long to give antibiotics because we did not detect an infection ”explains Dr. Freund.
And to conclude: “some emergency physicians wonder if they will have the time. But once set up, doctors appreciate these meetings because they realize that they improve the management of Emergencies, which is more efficient and productive ”.
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