A recent blog by a noted nurse-educator about the agonizing death of her grandmother illustrates the opportunity for multiple medical errors in today’s complex medical care system.
All health care facilities are, or soon will be, required to maintain a patient’s medical records in electronic form. Almost all hospitals currently use EMR systems. Several U.S. companies are marketing and installing these systems. Using them has helped avoid some problems of hand-written charts, but also has created entirely new problems.
When a patient undergoes a surgical procedure, an unexpected outcome can be a nerve or skin injury caused by improper positioning. The surgical team is responsible for ensuring that the patient is positioned in such a way that there is not excessive pressure on any particular part of the body and a nerve is not stretched to the point of injury.