How Communication "Failed" or "Saved the Day": Counterfactual Accounts of Medical Errors
Authors
Street, Richard L. Jr.Petrocelli, John V.
Amroze, Azraa
Bergelt, Corinna
Murphy, Margaret
Wieting, J. Michael.
Mazor, Kathleen M.
Document Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
2020-12-01Keywords
patient activationpatient engagement
patient safety
physician-patient communication
physician-patient relations
Health Communication
Health Services Administration
Health Services Research
Patient Safety
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Communication breakdowns among clinicians, patients, and family members can lead to medical errors, yet effective communication may prevent such mistakes. This investigation examined patients' and family members' experiences where they believed communication failures contributed to medical errors or where effective communication prevented a medical error ("close calls"). The study conducted a thematic analysis of open-ended responses to an online survey of patients' and family members' past experiences with medical errors or close calls. Of the 93 respondents, 56 (60%) provided stories of medical errors, and the remaining described close calls. Two predominant themes emerged in medical error stories that were attributed to health care providers-information inadequacy (eg, delayed, inaccurate) and not listening to or being dismissive of a patient's or family member's concerns. In stories of close calls, a patient's or family member's proactive communication (eg, being assertive, persistent) most often "saved the day." The findings highlight the importance of encouraging active patient/family involvement in a patient's medical care to prevent errors and of improving systems to provide meaningful information in a timely manner.Source
Street RL Jr, Petrocelli JV, Amroze A, Bergelt C, Murphy M, Wieting JM, Mazor KM. How Communication "Failed" or "Saved the Day": Counterfactual Accounts of Medical Errors. J Patient Exp. 2020 Dec;7(6):1247-1254. doi: 10.1177/2374373520925270. Epub 2020 May 26. PMID: 33457572; PMCID: PMC7786716. Link to article on publisher's site
DOI
10.1177/2374373520925270Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/41717PubMed ID
33457572Related Resources
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).Distribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1177/2374373520925270
Scopus Count
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
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