In the essay “When Doctors Make Mistakes” written by Atul Gawande, he writes a first-hand account of mistakes made by himself and his colleagues. The essay is divided into five parts, each named to the narrative and emotions of the story he would tell. In each story he tells, he uses such vivid language that we as readers feel as if we are one of his colleagues. Each section has its own importance to the whole point he was trying to get across, ““All doctors make terrible mistakes” (657). We are first introduced to Dr. Gawande in part one, Crash Victim, where he is currently working on a female who was in a rollover accident, and everything seems to be going wrong when he performs an emergency tracheostomy. In section two, Banality of Error,
he talks about the consequence of errors made during surgeries. “It was estimated that, nationwide, a hundred and twenty thousand patients die each year at least partly as a result of errors in care.” (658). Gawande does a wonderful job of putting a humanistic side to this and to all the stories we hear on the news. The headlines seem to always go something like: surgery gone wrong, patient has knife left in him after surgery, doctor sued for malpractice. The major point he discussed was that mistakes cannot be totally prevented by lawsuits. The third part, Show and Tell, discusses M & M meetings. In Gawandes hospital, these meetings take place once per week. The surgeons will present mistakes made and how it could be improved upon, without mentioning the doctor’s name, to avoid future mistakes. The fourth part, Nearly Perfect, he discusses improvements made with new machines and simple engineering tools to avoid minor errors. In the last section, Getting It Right, he includes an example of his own experience during surgery when a major error was expected to be made, but was avoided. It is not often that we want to confess to the mistakes that we have made in the past, especially for someone who is in the medical field. Doctors, nurses, and surgeons all have to constab
The writing style of the author is quite interesting to me. Atul Gawande’s honesty, a major aspect of his writing style, beautifully highlights the good and bad of any medical profession. For example, Gawande’s argument over the use of patients for resident training
In the text, Gawande states, “I punctured a patient’s lung, for example-the right lung of a chief of surgery from another hospital, no less-and given the odds, I’m sure such things will happen again.” This shows how fatal errors can occur during a surgical procedure however, it is something that surgical residents have to grow accustomed to since mistakes like this are likely to reoccur. Gawande also mentions that when practicing on a patient, mistakes are bound to happen however, it is a part of learning. In the text, Gawande states, “She let me continue with the next steps, which I bumbled through. I didn’t realize how long and floppy the guide wire was until I pulled the coil of its plastic sleeve, and, putting one end of it into the patient, I very nearly contaminated the other.” This quote proves that although mistakes can happen, it is a part of the learning process. In this specific part, Gawande talks about how he nearly made a severe error however, he was able to learn from his mistake and complete the procedure successfully. This shows how practicing on patients is necessary for the advancement of the medical field. Therefore, although ethical and practical tensions may arise, practicing on patients is needed in order to save the lives of many in the long
For instance, the crux represented in each chapter of Gawande’s novel is that physicians save lives. For centuries physicians have abided by the Hippocratic Oath, in essence stating that the individual will prevent, cure, and/or save the life of a patient to the best of their ability. With no doubt is this noticed throughout every portion of the book. This can be seen when Gawande explains the development of obstetrics, the tools used in childbirth, and how infant death rates through childbirth decreased. Additionally, another example of doctors at their finest when saving patients is shown when a Cincinnati hospital did everything in its power to increase the average life expectancy of cystic fibrosis patients. Although these cases show excellent performances in saving lives, every physician takes the Hippocratic Oath to state their willingness to help patients no matter what the cost
College students have concerns about writing an essay incorrectly, now be able to pass your class in an efficient matter by learning the effective way to write your essay. In “why do doctors commit suicide?” residency student are getting dangerous consequences by the pressure of becoming a doctor. Due to the fact that stress has made doctors emotional, thinking that all medical students are alone and have no support on how to release the pressure of being a doctor. Therefore, the intended audience and argument of the author was for doctors and residency medical students to know they are not alone in dealing with pressure of emotions. In addition, having the students know they are able develop relief from stress, since a “tired and depressed doctor who is an island of self-doubt simply isn’t as likely to improve the outcomes of his or her patients” (SINHA, 2014, para.12). The argument of the editorial is not all rhetorically successful because of the limited and ineffective use of ethos, logos, and pathos in editorial, nevertheless the main intended audience of residency medical student was correct by the author.
Tensely watching his patient, the experienced doctor feverishly checked his phone for confirmation to begin the surgery. Aware that the radioactive tracer he injected into his patient was rapidly decimating he wondered how he could have prevented this situation. Could he have been more careful when to inject the material? Could he have picked a better date for the operation? Atul Gawande found himself questioning his ability as a medical care provider. All humans make mistakes, however in a profession where human lives are at stake mistakes are unacceptable. The chase for perfection has allured humans since the beginning of time, whether an athlete, politician or doctor, perfection has long been sought after. Yet, after so much time have humans gotten any closer to improving their performance, or has their obsession with perfection blinded them?
Roger Higgs, in “On Telling Patients the Truth” supplies commonly used arguments for paternalistic deception. For the purposes of this paper, paternalism will be defined as, “interference with one’s autonomy or self determination for their own good.” The first argument for paternalistic deception is founded on the idea that medicine is a technical subject where there are very few guarantees (613). Thus, Higgs supplies the argument that not only is it impossible for a patient to understand the true breadth of their diagnosis and prognosis, but additionally that medical predictions are not medical truths. The second argument for paternalistic deception comes from the belief that patients do not actually want to know the truth about their condition, and could suffer from worse health outcomes if they are told the truth (614, 615).
Almost doctors and physicians in the world have worked at a hospital, so they must know many patients’ circumstances. They have to do many medical treatments when the patients come to the emergency room. It looks like horror films with many torture scenes, and the patients have to pay for their pains. The doctors have to give the decisions for every circumstance, so they are very stressful. They just want to die instead of suffering those medical treatments. In that time, the patients’ family just believes in the doctors and tells them to do whatever they can, but the doctors just do something that 's possible. Almost patients have died after that expensive medical treatments, but the doctors still do those medical procedures. That doctors did not have enough confidence to tell the truth to the patients’ families. Other doctors have more confidence, so they explain the health condition to the patients’ families. One time, the author could not save his patient, and the patient had found another doctor to help her. That doctor decided to cut her legs, but the patient still died in fourteen days
Should doctors tell the truth to their patients? How much information should the patient know about a certain ill or operation? These controversial questions are asked more frequently in our society. Patients nowadays,. are very sensitive to certain diseases more than before. This paper argues against telling the truth in doctor-patient relationship. Not by defending the idea directly but, by presenting first how truth can be harmful to the patient and by giving Higgs’ objection to it, then by giving my own objection to Higgs’ argument.
As the story begins, the unnamed doctor is introduced as one who appears to be strictly professional. “Aas often, in such cases, they weren’t telling me more than they had to, it was up to me to tell them; that’s why they were spending three dollars on me.” (par. 3) The doctor leaves the first impression that he is one that keeps his attention about the job and nothing out of the ordinary besides stating his impressions on the mother, father and the patient, Mathilda. Though he does manage to note that Mathilda has a fever. The doctor takes what he considers a “trial shot” and “point of departure” by inquiring what he suspects is a sore throat (par. 6). This point in the story, nothing remains out of the ordinary or questionable about the doctor’s methods, until the story further develops.
It is shocking to know that every year 98000 patients die from medical errors that can be prevented(Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M. S. (Eds.), 2000). Medical errors are not a new issue in our healthcare system; these have been around for a long time. Hospitals have been trying to improve quality care and patients safety by implementing different strategies to prevent and reduce medical errors for past thirty years. Medical errors are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in America (Allen, 2013). In addition medical errors are costing our healthcare system an estimated $735 billion to $980 billion (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2012).
The biggest conflict of this story is that the doctor needs to check the patient, which is a little girl, but the patient will not let him. The Doctor seems to be ordinary and doing an ordinary duty, he comes checkups on the sick patient. But, we know that there is more to the story because his thoughts. Before we go in depth of the story, we need to analyze the doctor and Mathilda, the sick patient.
Second scenario. As a nurse manager, I would implement the adaptive leadership approach to effectively address the employee clinical incompetence issue. Clinical incompetence is a serious problem in any healthcare organizations and it can negatively affect patient quality of care, outcomes, and safety. According to Yoder-Wise (2015), “clinical incompetence is one of the most frustrating problems the nurse leader faces” (p. 454). This problem can be corrected by using different strategies and steps to help resolve it. The first strategy to implement is speaking with the employee to identify the root of the problem. Sometimes the problem may be from the lack of self-confidence. If that is the case, I would motivate the employee to believe in
Mistakes typically possess negative connotations. Lewis Thomas, author of Medusa and the Snail, vividly and passionately expresses how he understands mistakes, often underrated and brilliant, to be nothing less than the root of all greatness and overall brilliant methods of discovery or enlightenment. However, one’s interpretation of the meaning of “mistake” is a deciding factor; despite Lewis’ theory which may occur on a rare occasion, mistakes seem to lead to disasters more often than not. Upon hearing the word “mistake,” I generally associate it with accidents, risks, and peril; on the contrary, author Thomas Lewis depicts his perception of a mistake as a simple misunderstanding.
On the first day of class, we discussed how modernization has brought the institution of medicine so far. Although the cost of modernization is seen as the "social germ", modernization has also brought enormous improvement in health. Modern medicine defies all ancient reason. In primitive societies the division of labor was vague, no real specializing in anything, but over years of experimentation and development, the establishment of medicine was born. We now have overflowing systems of specialization and technological advancements, but this did not happen overnight.
...ck competence, sincerity, or diligence, but because they must make decisions about tremendously complex problems with very little solid evidence available to back them up” (Kumar and Nash 82-83). Though intuitive errors may be made, some of these are due to how the discovery of new ailments is continuous, and how humankind still does not understand everything about how illnesses and biological systems function. The treatment of medical conditions has still not been perfected and is the reason why the field of medicine is still attempting to discover new, innovative ways to cure diseases and other medical conditions.