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There is probably no worse feeling in the world than realizing you’ve made a medical mistake.  The one that bothers me the most is failing to turn on the oxygen during a resuscitation; I feel slightly better knowing that the patient was a hospice patient and probably was going to die even with the O₂ (and probably shouldn’t have even undergone the resuscitation–but that’s a whole different ball of wax).

However, unlike the rest of the medical world, there isn’t a whole lot of data on prehospital medical errors.  That’s half the reason this study is interesting; the rest is because they didn’t try to use numbers, but instead captured descriptive data from interviews and focus groups.  I’m just going to throw out some of the article’s quotes from study participants, and save my thoughts on the matter for another post.

• [Response and repercussions] “There will be none as he is a volunteer.”
• “Training is not the same all over.”
• “When you ask for an attending, you get an attitude.”
• “A good paramedic wouldn’t need to pull out a cheat sheet [reference card].”
• “Next time why don’t you call me to the scene to do your intubations for you?”–interview participant who refrained from rapid sequence intubation in a patient who was lethargic but could easily maintain an airway using basic measures, being chastised by peers for not paralyzing and intubating the patient.
• “Almost all of the negative events I can recall over a 30-year period in EMS have been in the ER.”

Filed under: EMS, EMS Research