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Decreasing medical errors by reducing nurses’ cognitive overload
In Australia, medical errors result in as many as 18,000 unnecessary deaths, while more than 50,000 patients become disabled each year.
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I always wonder where people get the massive numbers of people who are claimed to die of medication errors in hospital. You say that approximately 15,500 die in Australian hospitals from medication error each year (86% of 18,000).
But the ABS says a total of just over 86,000 died in hospital in 2019. (https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/research/classifying-place-death-australian-mortality-statistics )
So almost 1 in 5 deaths in hospital are caused by medication errors by your number. Where does this number come from, since the papers I have read are estimates, based on guesses. I have not seen any research which can accurately say how many people were killed by medication error. And we should be doing just this research.
I agree that a lot of errors are made in hospitals, by overloaded staff, and by systems, imposed by senior management, which seem to be designed to cause errors, in the name of “efficiency”, or to use nurses and doctors as data entry clerks.
As a clinician of 20 years plus experience, I have seen many medication errors, but none that seriously harmed a patient.