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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
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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

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