Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T23:57:27.137Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Morally Managing Medical Mistakes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2000

MARTIN L. SMITH  and
HEIDI P. FORSTER
MARTIN L. SMITH
Affiliation:
Martin I. Smith, S.T.D., is Staff Bioethicist at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio.
HEIDI P. FORSTER
Affiliation:
Heidi Forster, J.D., completed a one-year Visiting Assistant Professorship at Case Western Reserve University's Schools of Law and Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio, and in the fall of 1999 began a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Mistakes and errors happen in most spheres of human life and activity, including in medicine. A mistake can be as simple and benign as the collection of an extra and unnecessary urine sample. Or a mistake can cause serious but reversible harm, such as an overdose of insulin in a patient with diabetes, resulting in hypoglycemia, seizures, and coma. Or a mistake can result in serious and permanent damage for the patient, such as the failure to consider epiglottitis in an initial differential diagnosis, resulting in a chronic vegetative state for a seven-year-old boy. Or a mistake can be an error in judgment that leads to a patient's death.

Type
SPECIAL SECTION: TERRA INCOGNITA: UNCHARTED TERRAIN BETWEEN DOCTORS AND PATIENTS
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , January 2000 , pp. 38 - 53
Copyright
© 2000 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)