Tag Archives: patient safety

Why now is the time to report on sepsis

Leave a reply
Rory Staunton

Rory Staunton. Photo courtesy of End Sepsis and the Staunton family

When 12-year-old Rory Staunton cut his arm during gym class in 2012, what should have been a simple wound became a nightmare that resulted in Rory’s death.

It started when the gym teacher covered the cut with two Band-Aids without cleaning it or sending Rory to the school nurse. It continued with each doctor Rory’s parents saw who neglected to identify his symptoms of sepsis, instead diagnosing him with a stomach virus and dehydration. 

Continue reading →

Tara Haelle (@TaraHaelle) is AHCJ's medical studies core topic leader, guiding journalists through the jargon-filled shorthand of science and research and enabling them to translate the evidence into accurate information.

In her new book, physician-journalist
reframes what’s wrong with U.S. health care

Leave a reply
Ilana Yurkiewicz, M.D.

Ilana Yurkiewicz, M.D.

It’s a cliché to say that American health care is broken. Ilana Yurkiewicz, M.D., a Stanford University oncologist and internal medicine physician, says journalists should be more specific. The central problem, she argues, is that health care is fragmented.

“Fragmented” is the title of a new book in which Yurkiewicz, who’s written about medicine for such publications as Undark and Hematology News, describes barriers that prevent physicians from seeing a patient’s full medical narrative. 

Health systems can’t easily share records. Electronic health records bury information. Payment systems de-prioritize follow-up. Grueling 28-hour shifts for medical residents discourage accountability. Primary care is underfunded. Sub-specialization is emphasized at the expense of holistic care.

Continue reading →

Mary Chris Jaklevic is AHCJ's topic leader for patient safety. She has been a contributor to HealthNewsReview.org, a project that aimed to improve health care journalism by critiquing the accuracy and balance of media messages about medical interventions, and was an AHCJ board member from 2005 to 2009.

Quality rankings emerge for outpatient surgery

Leave a reply
Ben Harder, Missy Danforth, and Thomas Tsai

From left to right: Ben Harder of U.S. News & World Report; Missy Danforth of Leapfrog; and Thomas Tsai, M.D., M.P.H., of Harvard Medical School

For decades, same-day procedures such as joint replacements and colonoscopies have outnumbered inpatient surgeries, yet only recently have consumers had data on the quality and safety of facilities that do them.

Continue reading →

Mary Chris Jaklevic is AHCJ's topic leader for patient safety. She has been a contributor to HealthNewsReview.org, a project that aimed to improve health care journalism by critiquing the accuracy and balance of media messages about medical interventions, and was an AHCJ board member from 2005 to 2009.

More data needed on disparities
in patient safety research, experts say

Leave a reply
man holding medical chart

U.S. Navy patient safety training. Photo by Macy Hinds | Public domain photo

A growing body of research shows a link between gender, race and ethnicity and unsafe patient care, but some experts say more comprehensive patient data are needed to better understand why certain groups are more likely to be harmed by medical error. 

Continue reading →

Margarita Martín-Hidalgo Birnbaum (@mbirnbaumnews) is AHCJ's Health Equity Core Topic Leader. An independent journalist who has covered health disparities. Birnbaum’s stories have been published by WebMD, American Heart Association News, and American Indian, the magazine of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

Why you should be writing about diagnostic errors

Leave a reply
Hardeep Singh, M.D., M.P.H.

Hardeep Singh, M.D., M.P.H.

In 2015, major U.S. news organizations flocked to cover a seminal report by the Institute of Medicine that described the widespread harms from missed and delayed diagnoses. 

But since that burst of attention, health care providers have done little to address the problem, according to leading researchers in the field who spoke at a conference in the Netherlands this month. 

“I think every country is struggling with this,” Laura Zwaan, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the Institute of Medical Education Research at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, said in an interview.   

Continue reading →

Mary Chris Jaklevic is AHCJ's topic leader for patient safety. She has been a contributor to HealthNewsReview.org, a project that aimed to improve health care journalism by critiquing the accuracy and balance of media messages about medical interventions, and was an AHCJ board member from 2005 to 2009.