After The Error

In a series of true stories from across Canada, this collection seeks to point out the considerable human toll that medical errors cause. Victims of medical errors and their families who speak out often do so at considerable emotional, psychological, and financial expense. But their willingness to share their harrowing stories has helped to lay the foundation for numerous patient safety programs and continues to identify problems, provide solutions, and raise awareness. These emotional and moving stories underline serious issues with medical errors while empowering patients.

Medical errors kill 14,000 people in Canada each year, adversely affect hundreds of thousands and cost close to two billion dollars. But this is not a situation unique to Canada. The NHS frequently comes under fire for misdiagnoses or for completely ignoring patients with fatal symptoms. After The Error is a collection of true stories, and it is the first book anywhere to recognise what patients affected by medical errors, their families and immediate healthcare providers have done to prevent others from enduring similar experiences.

Medical error is a leading problem of health care in the United States. Each year, more patients die as a result of medical mistakes than are killed by motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. While most government and regulatory efforts are directed toward reducing and preventing errors, the actions that should follow the injury or death of a patient are still hotly debated. According to Nancy Berlinger, conversations on patient safety are missing several important components: religious voices, traditions, and models. In After Harm, Berlinger draws on sources in theology, ethics, religion, and culture to create a practical and comprehensive approach to addressing the needs of patients, families, and clinicians affected by medical error. She emphasizes the importance of acknowledging fallibility, telling the truth, confronting feelings of guilt and shame, and providing just compensation. After Harm adds important human dimensions to an issue that has profound consequences for patients and health care providers.

Experts estimate that as many as 98,000 people die in any given year from medical errors that occur in hospitals. That's more than die from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDSâ€"three causes that receive far more public attention. Indeed, more people die annually from medication errors than from workplace injuries. Add the financial cost to the human tragedy, and medical error easily rises to the top ranks of urgent, widespread public problems. To Err Is Human breaks the silence that has surrounded medical errors and their consequenceâ€"but not by pointing fingers at caring health care professionals who make honest mistakes. After all, to err is human. Instead, this book sets forth a national agendaâ€"with state and local implicationsâ€"for reducing medical errors and improving patient safety through the design of a safer health system. This volume reveals the often startling statistics of medical error and the disparity between the incidence of error and public perception of it, given many patients' expectations that the medical profession always performs perfectly. A careful examination is made of how the surrounding forces of legislation, regulation, and market activity influence the quality of care provided by health care organizations and then looks at their handling of medical mistakes. Using a detailed case study, the book reviews the current understanding of why these mistakes happen. A key theme is that legitimate liability concerns discourage reporting of errorsâ€"which begs the question, "How can we learn from our mistakes?" Balancing regulatory versus market-based initiatives and public versus private efforts, the Institute of Medicine presents wide-ranging recommendations for improving patient safety, in the areas of leadership, improved data collection and analysis, and development of effective systems at the level of direct patient care. To Err Is Human asserts that the problem is not bad people in health careâ€"it is that good people are working in bad systems that need to be made safer. Comprehensive and straightforward, this book offers a clear prescription for raising the level of patient safety in American health care. It also explains how patients themselves can influence the quality of care that they receive once they check into the hospital. This book will be vitally important to federal, state, and local health policy makers and regulators, health professional licensing officials, hospital administrators, medical educators and students, health caregivers, health journalists, patient advocatesâ€"as well as patients themselves. First in a series of publications from the Quality of Health Care in America, a project initiated by the Institute of Medicine

This book presents direct and concise explanations and examples to many LaTeX syntax and structures, allowing students and researchers to quickly understand the basics that are required for writing and preparing book manuscripts, journal articles, reports, presentation slides and academic theses and dissertations for publication. Unlike much of the literature currently available on LaTeX, which takes a more technical stance, focusing on the details of the software itself, this book presents a user-focused guide that is concerned with its application to everyday tasks and scenarios. It is packed with exercises and looks at topics like formatting text, drawing and inserting tables and figures, bibliographies and indexes, equations, slides, and provides valuable explanations to error and warning messages so you can get work done with the least time and effort needed. This means LaTeX in 24 Hours can be used by students and researchers with little or no previous experience with LaTeX to gain quick and noticeable results, as well as being used as a quick reference guide for those more experienced who want to refresh their knowledge on the subject.

Getting the right diagnosis is a key aspect of health care - it provides an explanation of a patient's health problem and informs subsequent health care decisions. The diagnostic process is a complex, collaborative activity that involves clinical reasoning and information gathering to determine a patient's health problem. According to Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, diagnostic errors-inaccurate or delayed diagnoses-persist throughout all settings of care and continue to harm an unacceptable number of patients. It is likely that most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, sometimes with devastating consequences. Diagnostic errors may cause harm to patients by preventing or delaying appropriate treatment, providing unnecessary or harmful treatment, or resulting in psychological or financial repercussions. The committee concluded that improving the diagnostic process is not only possible, but also represents a moral, professional, and public health imperative. Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, a continuation of the landmark Institute of Medicine reports To Err Is Human (2000) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), finds that diagnosis-and, in particular, the occurrence of diagnostic errorsâ€"has been largely unappreciated in efforts to improve the quality and safety of health care. Without a dedicated focus on improving diagnosis, diagnostic errors will likely worsen as the delivery of health care and the diagnostic process continue to increase in complexity. Just as the diagnostic process is a collaborative activity, improving diagnosis will require collaboration and a widespread commitment to change among health care professionals, health care organizations, patients and their families, researchers, and policy makers. The recommendations of Improving Diagnosis in Health Care contribute to the growing momentum for change in this crucial area of health care quality and safety.

The most comprehensive medical assisting resource available, Kinn's The Medical Assistant, 11th Edition provides unparalleled coverage of the practical, real-world administrative and clinical skills essential to your success in health care. Kinn's 11th Edition combines current, reliable content with innovative support tools to deliver an engaging learning experience and help you confidently prepare for today's competitive job market. Study more effectively with detailed Learning Objectives, Vocabulary terms and definitions, and Connections icons that link important concepts in the text to corresponding exercises and activities throughout the companion Evolve Resources website and Study Guide & Procedure Checklist Manual. Apply what you learn to realistic administrative and clinical situations through an Applied Learning Approach that integrates case studies at the beginning and end of each chapter. Master key skills and clinical procedures through step-by-step instructions and full-color illustrations that clarify techniques. Confidently meet national medical assisting standards with clearly identified objectives and competencies incorporated throughout the text. Sharpen your analytical skills and test your understanding of key concepts with critical thinking exercises. Understand the importance of patient privacy with the information highlighted in helpful HIPAA boxes. Demonstrate your proficiency to potential employers with an interactive portfolio builder on the companion Evolve Resources website. Familiarize yourself with the latest administrative office trends and issues including the Electronic Health Record. Confidently prepare for certification exams with online practice exams and an online appendix that mirrors the exam outlines and provides fast, efficient access to related content. Enhance your value to employers with an essential understanding of emerging disciplines and growing specialty areas. Find information quickly and easily with newly reorganized chapter content and charting examples. Reinforce your understanding through medical terminology audio pronunciations, Archie animations, Medisoft practice management software exercises, chapter quizzes, review activities, and more on a completely revised companion Evolve Resources website.

Parsing technology traditionally consists of two branches, which correspond to the two main application areas of context-free grammars and their generalizations. Efficient deterministic parsing algorithms have been developed for parsing programming languages, and quite different algorithms are employed for analyzing natural language. The Functional Treatment of Parsing provides a functional framework within which the different traditional techniques are restated and unified. The resulting theory provides new recursive implementations of parsers for context-free grammars. The new implementations, called recursive ascent parsers, avoid explicit manipulation of parse stacks and parse matrices, and are in many ways superior to conventional implementations. They are applicable to grammars for programming languages as well as natural languages. The book has been written primarily for students and practitioners of parsing technology. With its emphasis on modern functional methods, however, the book will also be of benefit to scientists interested in functional programming. The Functional Treatment of Parsing is an excellent reference and can be used as a text for a course on the subject.