Reducing Medical Misadventures: “My name is Atul Gawande and I’m a surgeon”

Safety is NOT the result of people not making mistakes – people make mistakes all the time. Safety occurs when a system is robust enough to catch mistakes.

When a team gathers in a hospital operating theatre to perform an operation, it seems a matter of basic politeness that members should introduce themselves to one another. However it turns out that it is more than this. According to a report just published online by The New England Journal of Medicine, improbable as it may seem, it is one of a set of basic actions that help determine whether the patient lives or dies.

The paper reports a study, conducted simultaneously in hospitals in eight countries round the world and covering nearly 8000 patients. It tallied outcomes for 3733 who received surgery before a procedural improvement was introduced and 3955 receiving it afterwards.

How bad will the recession be and how long will it last?

The belief that we will ultimately cope better that other countries might be mistaken.