Doctors work with checklists to prevent errors. In the picture a cesarean section Photo: stock.adobe
By Birgit Bürkner
Despite safety checks, the same medical mistakes keep happening. The Patient Safety Alliance is therefore calling for a so-called never-event register. To this end, it has already identified 22 events, i.e. incidents with high potential for damage that can in principle be prevented. Examples:
► Surgery or other invasive procedure on the wrong patient or on the wrong person
location of the body
► Leaving a foreign body in the patient during an operation
► Fertilization with the wrong sperm and/or egg cell
► Misplacement of the ventilation tube in the esophagus
► Incorrect administration of medication (e.g. into the bloodstream instead of orally)
► Injection of air into the bloodstream
► Burns or scalds during the treatment or care process
► Loss of an unrecoverable tissue sample
► Attracting a magnetizable object into the magnet of a magnetic resonance tomograph
► Patients who are forgotten in treatment and examination areas