This text-based course is a written transcript of the seminar, “The Role of the Speech Pathologist in Preventing Medical Errors”, presented by Michelle Tristani on 11/19/2012.
>> Michelle Tristani: Thank you very much. It is my honor to speak with all of you today about a very important topic that has become a requirement for us in the arena of speech pathology, regarding preventing medical errors, and the speech pathologist’s role in preventing medical errors.
Our course objectives are to first define types of medical errors. There are more than three and in your post-test you will be asked to talk about three at least. Next is to list factors that will increase the risk of medical errors, to describe strategies to prevent medical errors, outline steps of the root cause analysis, and lastly to identify medical errors within the speech pathology scope of practice.
Our agenda will cover the history and awareness of mistakes, types of medical errors, risks of and potential for error. Specific to speech pathology, we will cover factors that increase the risk of medical errors within our field and the potential for error in speech pathology clinical situations.
Next we will get into error prevention and strategies to prevent medical errors, and what vital role we have as speech-language pathologists in preventing medical errors. We will cover examples of medical errors within the speech pathology scope of practice, and then we will get into the meat of how to resolve errors and the root cause analysis. I would like to make mention that this course meets the criteria for the Florida statute 456.013 that requires a two-hour course on the prevention of medical errors.
How Frequently Do Medical Errors Occur?
Let’s start by talking about how frequently medical errors occur. We all should know that going into the hospital is far more risky than flying in an airplane. If you are admitted to the hospital in any country, chance of an error is 1 in 10. The chance of dying due to an error would be 1 in 300. The risk of dying in an air crash is about 1 in 10-million passengers. Your reference for these statistics is from Liam Donaldson (2011). You can tell here that the depth of medical errors is far reaching.
