Physicians aren’t immune from it. Lawyers aren’t immune from it. Even actors aren’t immune from it. Actor Dennis Quaid’s newborn twins, who are receiving IV therapy, were given an overdose of IV heparin – 1,000 times the normal amount for newborns. Heparin, a medicine routinely given to prevent clots in IVs, can cause significant bleeding in the body and brain, when given in high doses. It can lead to stroke and/or death. Yet grabbing the wrong dose of heparin for an IV is a relatively easy mistake to make. Heparin is given to everybody with IVs several times a day – and many strengths are available, depending on the age and need of the person.
Luckily, the twins are reportedly doing fine. Because of their dad’s popularity as an actor, the issue of “medical errors” will most likely be brought to the attention of many – and this is a good thing. Although we don’t hear about it often enough, medical errors are one of the leading causes of death and injury. They can occur anywhere in the health care system, from your doctor’s office to the pharmacy to the hospital. Almost 100,000 people die each year from medical errors made in hospitals alone. Although systems are set up in hospitals to prevent errors on the floor and during surgery, they don’t work all the time — and some hospitals do a better job than others at enforcing these procedures.
You can imagine how a tired, busy, stressed out health care worker who has never had a medical error before may take a short cut and not double check a bottle or a medicine – even just once. But it only takes once to cause a medical error and sometimes, such as with the case of Dennis Quaid’s twins, this error can be life threatening.
I understand the potential for medical errors – my husband was the director of the Center that studied errors and quality of healthcare in the United States. The potential to do harm makes me nervous as a physician. When I prescribe a medicine, I first need to convert the weight from pounds to kilograms. Then I have to figure out how much a child needs based on his weight. Then I have to translate that into the number of cc’s or teaspoons the child gets of that medicine. I usually check my calculations at least twice — but it still makes me nervous.
When I worked on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, we had one pharmacist who understood the potential for medical errors. He asked all the physicians to mark the child’s weight and drug allergies on the prescription and double checked all our doses. We all appreciated that and think it is a wonderful system. However, since leaving the Reservation I no longer jot down this information because pharmacists don’t do anything with it.
While the government, hospitals, and doctors’ offices are working on reducing medical errors in their settings, there is a lot that you can also do. You can (and should) be your own advocate.
Overall, make sure you know every illness you and your child has, what medications you are taking, and any allergies you may have. Keep results of all your tests and procedures – make sure a copy of the results are sent to your doctor. Ask your doctor questions if you don’t understand something. If you are prescribed a medicine, ask if it has any interaction with the medicines you are already taking. Ask again at the pharmacy. If you or your child are hospitalized, ask questions when things don’t make sense. Ask about medicines that you (or your child) are receiving and why.