• Emerg Med J · Jul 2001

    Diagnostic errors in an accident and emergency department.

    • H R Guly.
    • Accident and Emergency Department, Derriford Hospital, Plymouth PL6 8DH, UK. henry.guly@phnt.swest.nhs.uk
    • Emerg Med J. 2001 Jul 1;18(4):263-9.

    ObjectivesTo describe the diagnostic errors occurring in a busy district general hospital accident and emergency (A&E) department over four years.MethodAll diagnostic errors discovered by or notified to one A&E consultant were noted on a computerised database.Results953 diagnostic errors were noted in 934 patients. Altogether 79.7% were missed fractures. The most common reasons for error were misreading radiographs (77.8%) and failure to perform radiography (13.4%). The majority of errors were made by SHOs. Twenty two diagnostic errors resulted in complaints and legal actions and three patients who had a diagnostic error made, later died.ConclusionsGood clinical skills are essential. Most abnormalities missed on radiograph were not difficult to diagnose. Junior doctors in A&E should receive specific training and be tested on their ability to interpret radiographs correctly before being allowed to work unsupervised.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…