If you found yesterday's blog interesting, then you may want to review the Primer on Human factors Engineering in the Hospital Setting available here. The way things are designed can cause or prevent mistakes. For example, in the operating room, it used to be that the plugs for the anesthetic gasses and the oxygen could fit into each other's ports. This set the stage for a mix-up by an inexperienced or distracted tech when setting the room up for a surgical procedure. Quite a number of patients paid for this scenario with their lives and this was a frequent source of medical malpractice. Finally, someone woke up and realized that if the plugs were made in such a way that they did not fit into each other's ports this terrible mistake could not possibly happen. And, now manufacturing plugs and similar devices that cannot be interchanged is the design standard in hospitals and industries that depend on not getting power, fluid, or gas sources mixed up. This same idea applies to IV lines, computer controlled devices that have alarms, and pretty much anything that depends on a human to program it or operate it.
For more information about this or other medical malpractice issues, contact The Girards Law Firm at 888-897-2762