Dying Because of a Hospital?
Reported April 27, 2010
RICHMOND, Va. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — It’s supposed to be a place you go to for help, but sometimes, a trip to the hospital can turn into a patient’s worst nightmare. One in five Americans say themselves or a family member were victims of a medical mistake. Now hospitals are taking steps to ensure patients stay safe.
She looks like a typical young girl.
“Candace was the most beautiful, loving little girl,” Mathy Milling Downing told Ivanhoe. “She was everybody’s friend.”
But at 12, Candace downing was diagnosed with anxiety disorder and prescribed an antidepressant. An overdose of the drug resulted in the unthinkable.
“I took her to the doctor that afternoon,” explained Downing. “He said, She’s great. Come back in two weeks, and my beautiful, happy, loving 12-year-old, hanged herself.”
Medication errors cause at least 70,000 deaths in the United States each year, but now this machine, called PillPick, is making sure the right patients get the right drugs.
“The pill picker prevents the wrong medication from being given to the patient at the bedside,” explained John Ilic, Pharm.D., of Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill.
The robot puts a single dose of meds in a small plastic bag. Each bag has a bar code identifying the drug. A nurse scans it along with a bar code on the patient’s wristband. If the computer detects the wrong drug or dose, an alert sounds.
New technology is also putting the breaks on hospital-acquired infections. To remind workers to wash up more often, a sensor, worn as a badge, detects whether employees have washed their hands.
“A light on the badge will turn green, signifying that the health care worker has washed his or her hands” Michael Edmond, M.D., epidemiologist at VCU Medical Center in Richmond, Va., said.
Workers apply an alcohol-based hand sanitizer outside a patient’s room. Once they enter, the badge checks their hands for the presence of alcohol. A red light means no alcohol. A green light means they can treat the patient.
Two new ways hospitals are improving care and saving lives.
There are two key questions experts say you must ask if you’re a patient in the hospital. The first is to see whether the hospital has had any major safety issues with MRSA or other bacteria resistant to antibiotics. The second, what is the turnover rate of nurses? If it’s more than 10 percent, it could be a red flag nurses aren’t happy, which may compromise your care.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Jim Ritter
Senior Manager, Media Relations
Loyola University Medical Center
[email protected]
