A range of financial and work-schedule incentives is being offered to help candidates choose health care careers. And collaborative efforts between schools and health care providers will help teach students about their options within the health care field. In most health systems, medical errors are things to be kept quiet. No one wants to admit they made a mistake, let alone have a broad discussion of that mistake. And there has been good reason for such silence.
Providers can lose their jobs and face significant lawsuits if implicated.
So countless great opportunities to learn from mistakes and institute systems to prevent further errors are lost. But to effectively put in place systems which screen out errors before they occur requires that health systems create learning environments with open communication about what works and what does not. Human beings make mistakes, said John Combes, M.D. Senior Advisor to the Hospital and Health Systems of Pennsylvania, because they are in a hurry, are tired, are repeating something they do often, they are bored or they are anxious. In such environments, systems that detect and correct potential errors are essential, he said. Errors happen after a whole series of things have gone wrong.