A new Vox article revisits the case of Kim Hiatt, RN, who after 24 years in nursing made her first medical error: She administered 10 times the recommended dosage of medication to an infant, leading to the baby's death five days later. Seven months after that, Ms. Hiatt committed suicide.
The Vox piece closely examines Ms. Hiatt's case — her error, the subsequent shunning by the institutions that once supported her and her suicide. It is also an examination of medical errors and the less discussed damage they cause: the guilt healthcare workers silently live with.
Here are four things to know about medical errors and their effect on providers.
1. Research began by Albert Wu, MD, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Services and Outcome Research in Baltimore, in the 1990s has since been bolstered by others, and the cumulative research has identified three consistent facts about healthcare workers and medical errors: 1) errors are common in medicine, 2) after an accident, nurses and physicians experience emotional duress and sometimes physical harm, and 3) most providers think co-workers don't experience the same type of distress.
2. A 2007 survey facilitated by Susan Scott, MSN, RN, a patient safety expert at the University of Missouri in Columbia, found 68 percent of providers who had experienced a patient safety event reported receiving no institutional support for personal problems prompted by the incident.
3. Hospital leaders and state regulators have a tendency to respond to errors with austerity and not compassion. "No one has much tolerance for mistakes in this medical system," Dr. Wu told Vox. "Not only do we judge ourselves harshly, our colleagues tend to not be so charitable. They'll say things that are at best gossipy and at worst sound like bullying. There is discipline; people are certainly chastised, scolded and fired."
4. Steve Pratt, MD, helped create a provider support program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Pratt believes the impetus for change will have to come from increased focus on patient safety and the potential harm care delivered by a traumatized provider could do. "I see it as a moral imperative that clinicians get care...they're suffering physical and emotional injury. But none of that will drive this forward. The idea that another patient could be harmed — that the error would hurt someone else receiving care — ultimately will," Dr. Pratt told Vox.
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