Without meaning to detract from the delightful case histories here --- misdiagnoses or diagnostic errors are a serious public health problem in the US. Diagnostic error research remains woefully underfunded as a proverbially drop in the bucket of the roughly $45B or so spent annually in total federal healthcare research. And while the fi…
Without meaning to detract from the delightful case histories here --- misdiagnoses or diagnostic errors are a serious public health problem in the US. Diagnostic error research remains woefully underfunded as a proverbially drop in the bucket of the roughly $45B or so spent annually in total federal healthcare research. And while the finger can too often rightly be pointed at individual providers, there is really a whole host of possible causes and no single solution --- involving medical education itself and a great many of the structures and processes of the healthcare delivery system.
As someone who read something like 4000 medical articles a year for 32 years I can assure you that research has been done on medical errors and how to prevent them. Maybe not enough but it is out there. The problem of course is to err is human.
The problem is not that homo sapiens are innately error prone; the problem lies in the system in which they have to make decisions, even allowing for differences in diagnostic acumen. And of course, the results or effects of diagnostic errors or misdiagnoses are too often, and unfortunately, discovered after the fact.
Without meaning to detract from the delightful case histories here --- misdiagnoses or diagnostic errors are a serious public health problem in the US. Diagnostic error research remains woefully underfunded as a proverbially drop in the bucket of the roughly $45B or so spent annually in total federal healthcare research. And while the finger can too often rightly be pointed at individual providers, there is really a whole host of possible causes and no single solution --- involving medical education itself and a great many of the structures and processes of the healthcare delivery system.
As someone who read something like 4000 medical articles a year for 32 years I can assure you that research has been done on medical errors and how to prevent them. Maybe not enough but it is out there. The problem of course is to err is human.
The problem is not that homo sapiens are innately error prone; the problem lies in the system in which they have to make decisions, even allowing for differences in diagnostic acumen. And of course, the results or effects of diagnostic errors or misdiagnoses are too often, and unfortunately, discovered after the fact.