The Best Day to Have Surgery and Other Tips for Dodging Medical Errors

In 1999, medical errors by hospital staff in the U.S. resulted in 100,000 deaths and 500,000 injuries.  Some of these adverse events were preventable, and Dr. Walker provides a straight-to-the-point list of tips to follow to avoid being a part of that statistic.

Contracting infections in today's modern hospitals is very high on the list of dangers - even though it has always been a problem.  Sometimes doctors or even infectious disease specialists fail to wash their hands, resulting in the unfortunate spreading germs and viruses from one patient to another. Though it requires a brave patient to ask the doctor to wash his or her hands before an examination, doing so could prevent an infection and hence, it could save your life.

Medication errors are also nothing new. Unfortunately though, putting an end to them is easier said than done. A simple example would be that few patients are able to detect if medication prescribed in grams should have been written and administered in milligrams instead. Such an error could easily make a patient's situaion go badly - fast.

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