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Better Approaches to Detecting Errors in Children’s Care

Parents notice medical errors and bad reactions to treatments that may not show up in hospital records. Including them would improve patient safety.

Hospital records don’t make note of all medical errors and problems with treatments, according to a study published in JAMA Pediatrics. The investigators set out to find out how family-reported errors and adverse events compared with those in hospital safety records.

Attending to Parents’ Reports of Problems:

The researchers collected data from three sources: they talked to the parents of hospitalized children; they interviewed the health care workers taking care of the young patients; and they scrutinized the children’s medical records. They discovered that parents, doctors and nurses agreed, for the most part, on errors and serious reactions affecting the children.

But the medical records missed nearly half of the errors families reported and almost a quarter of the adverse events. The hospital incident reports only picked up about one-fifth of the problems families reported. They identified one third of the serious reactions.

This suggests that patient safety data on pediatric wards could be greatly improved by including parents’ reports in official hospital records. The researchers conclude:

“Families provide unique safety information and have the potential to be valuable partners in safety surveillance conducted by both hospitals and researchers.”

Khan et al, JAMA Pediatrics, Feb. 27, 2017

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About the Author
Terry Graedon, PhD, is a medical anthropologist and co-host of The People’s Pharmacy radio show, co-author of The People’s Pharmacy syndicated newspaper columns and numerous books, and co-founder of The People’s Pharmacy website. Terry taught in the Duke University School of Nursing and was an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology. She is a Fellow of the Society of Applied Anthropology. Terry is one of the country's leading authorities on the science behind folk remedies..
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