A wonderful, little-known, but very valuable resource for improving health care is MITSS – Medically Induced Trauma Support Services. (They pronounce it “mitts” and it has nothing to do with MIT.) I’ve written about them several times on e-patients.net and on my own “New Life” blog; a good introductory post is here. They support everyone involved in medical errors – the professionals as well as the patient/victims.
They invited me to give the opening remarks at their annual fundraiser last month. (More about them below.) It was a privilege. Here’s my talk. The slides aren’t in the video, but if you’ve seen the other talks on this site, you’ve seen most of the slides.
Part 1
Part 2
Why MITSS is important to me
I think it’s a tragedy when someone who’s worked for years to learn an important profession makes a mistake and finds their life ruined by the harm they just caused. I’m not saying screw-ups are fine with me (are you kidding??); I’m saying perfection is unrealistic. In any field. And, for the most part, healthcare doesn’t yet have the kind of error-prevention systems that other industries have. So the people pretty much work without a net.
Yes, errors happen, and people get hurt. Many are killed every year by medical errors; it’s unnecessarily dangerous to be in a hospital. Lots of people are working on that, in the Patient Safety movement, Lean process improvement, etc. We must improve.
I just hate it when someone who’s good hearted commits a human lapse, and every single person involved suffers from it and we never learn lessons from it. I hate it even more when they’re not allowed to get help, recover, and get back to life with renewed caution. It can cause emotional devastation, which does nothing to create a better future. And a better future is the only goal I think is worth working for.
As in any other industry – aviation, cars, anything – we need to learn from mistakes. That requires open discussion of what went wrong, and that requires helping the people involved talk about what may be a devastating memory.
My message
It’s important for us all (providers, patients, insurers, policy people) to get real about the fact that practicing medicine is audacious, and we all ought to participate – work together – in improving it.
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