TY - JOUR
T1 - Disclosure of harmful medical errors in out-of-hospital care
AU - Lu, Dave W.
AU - Guenther, Elisabeth
AU - Wesley, Allen K.
AU - Gallagher, Thomas H.
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding and support: By Annals policy, all authors are required to disclose any and all commercial, financial, and other relationships in any way related to the subject of this article as per ICMJE conflict of interest guidelines (see www.icmje.org ). The authors have stated that no such relationships exist. Dr. Gallagher is supported by grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) ( 1R18HS016506 , R18HS01953 ), a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, and the Greenwall Foundation . Dr. Guenther is supported by a grant from the AHRQ ( R21 HS19498 ).
PY - 2013/2
Y1 - 2013/2
N2 - Safety experts and national guidelines recommend disclosing harmful medical errors to patients. Communicating with patients and families about errors respects their autonomy, supports informed decisionmaking, may decrease malpractice costs, and can enhance patient safety. Yet existing disclosure guidelines may not account for the difficulty in discussing out-of-hospital errors with patients. Emergency medical services (EMS) providers operate in unpredictable environments that require rapid interventions for patients with whom they have only brief relationships. EMS providers also have limited access to patient medical data and risk management resources, which can make conducting disclosure conversations even more difficult. In addition, out-of-hospital errors may be discovered only after the transition of care to the inpatient setting, further complicating the question of who should disclose the error. EMS organizations should support the disclosure of out-of-hospital errors by fostering a nonpunitive culture of error reporting and disclosure, as well as developing guidelines for use by EMS systems.
AB - Safety experts and national guidelines recommend disclosing harmful medical errors to patients. Communicating with patients and families about errors respects their autonomy, supports informed decisionmaking, may decrease malpractice costs, and can enhance patient safety. Yet existing disclosure guidelines may not account for the difficulty in discussing out-of-hospital errors with patients. Emergency medical services (EMS) providers operate in unpredictable environments that require rapid interventions for patients with whom they have only brief relationships. EMS providers also have limited access to patient medical data and risk management resources, which can make conducting disclosure conversations even more difficult. In addition, out-of-hospital errors may be discovered only after the transition of care to the inpatient setting, further complicating the question of who should disclose the error. EMS organizations should support the disclosure of out-of-hospital errors by fostering a nonpunitive culture of error reporting and disclosure, as well as developing guidelines for use by EMS systems.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.annemergmed.2012.07.004
DO - 10.1016/j.annemergmed.2012.07.004
M3 - Article
C2 - 22883681
AN - SCOPUS:84872614162
SN - 0196-0644
VL - 61
SP - 215
EP - 221
JO - Annals of Emergency Medicine
JF - Annals of Emergency Medicine
IS - 2
ER -