Patient Safety

Visiting the emergency room can be a stressful experience for patients and medical staff alike. However, many hospitals can make the experience smoother and eliminate the risk of physician errors. […]

Many patients arrive at the hospital seeking treatment for deadly infections — but some acquire infections at the hospital. The United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that hospital-acquired […]

Few professions are mentally or physically more taxing than medicine. Physicians, in particular, face long hours and considerable stress. With over one-quarter of doctors working between 61 and 80 hours […]

Clerical mistakes are one of the most common — and least reported — issues in the medical industry. In our last post on the relationship between clerical errors and medical […]

Typically, when people picture medical malpractice, they think of obvious errors made during surgery. Often, however, the most harmful mistakes occur at completely unexpected points in the medical process. Clerical […]

Diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhea, and tuberculosis once posed a huge threat to ordinary Americans; according to the Centers for Disease Control, these three illnesses were responsible for a third […]

Few parents expect their newborns to end up in the NICU, and yet, estimates indicate that at least 10 percent of newborns find themselves there. Reasons for visiting the NICU […]

Could robot-assisted surgery be the future of healthcare? Advocates certainly think so. According to proponents, the use of robotics in surgery would lead to greater precision than humans can demonstrate […]

Surgery is in your near future and you’re feeling nervous. One mistake could cause years of suffering. Now is not the time for complacency; by paying attention to seemingly mundane […]

Tired doctors make more mistakes. Intuitively, we know this. And we may have read studies like this one (or related news reports). Yet medical culture still glorifies 28-hour shifts and […]