Re:‘This game is so realistic it feels just like working ove...
by bigDinosaur on Tuesday March 29, 2022 @12:42AM
(#30838850)
You are correct. Robert Wachter has written a lot on this (see his
The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age) and it's a common error to simply blame someone like a nurse for administering the incorrect medicine as opposed to seeing how that situation came to be. Healthcare has a lot to learn from how similar things are investigated in the aviation industry (note: that doesn't mean nurses get absolved of everything, just that even apparently insanely stupid mistakes are often the result of swiss-cheese style errors).
Edit: maybe drug companies are even partly responsible for confusing names & the whole system of generic versus trade names (as it seems this incident wouldn't have happened if the generic name were the only name by which the substance was known).
I'm not saying any of the above should be. I just think we should compare and contrast the medical profession with aviation. The reason the accident rate is so low in commercial aviation is a systems approach to safety. In the medical profession it's all about machismo and individual responsibility - which doesn't lead to continual improvement as an industry.