The reality of medical errors

In the United States, medical errors are the 3rd most common cause of death in human health care.¹ In terms of veterinary care, a study of 606 veterinarians showed that 74% of these veterinarians surveyed had been involved in one or more medical errors, with more than half being affected professionally and personally by these events.¹ In an interview with dvm360 on her lecture Oops, Whoops, and Oh No: Medical Errors at Veterinary Facilities at the Southwest Veterinary Symposium conference in Fort Worth Texas, Theresa Cosper-Roberts, RVT, CVPM, ACE(DE), CVBL, talked about medical errors in the veterinary profession.

She shared the most common reaction veterinary professionals have after making a mistake, and delved into reasons why these errors can occur while explaining what the Swiss cheese model of accident causation is, and more.

Below is a partial transcript:

Theresa Cosper-Roberts, RVT, CVPM, ACE(DE), CVBL: Whenever there's an error, [people] run around screaming like Chicken Little, ‘The sky is falling. The sky is falling. Oh my gosh. What are we going to do?’ We're freaking out. We're blaming everyone. We're trying to figure out whose fault it was, and instead of assigning fault, we need to deal with things calmly and rationally: address the issue, make sure that the patient is okay, make sure that the person who committed the mistake was okay, and then go from there.

The big thing that we need to do as a profession is destigmatize errors. Things happen all the time. Everybody makes mistakes. No one is infallible, and we need to take away the stigma associated with making a mistake. And we need to have a…just culture where everyone has psychological safety, because when people are terrified of making mistakes, they're terrified of being punished or humiliated or embarrassed. They don't admit those mistakes, and that's when patients suffer. So…it's okay to make mistakes, it's okay to admit that we don't know how to do things or to question orders that we may think may be just slightly incorrect. That's how we can really prevent mistakes.

Reference

1. Bautista-Alejandre A. Using medical errors as learning opportunities. dvm360. June 10, 2024. Accessed September 27, 2024. https://www.dvm360.com/view/using-medical-errors-as-learning-opportunities