Der Urologe. Ausg. A
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Der Urologe. Ausg. A · Nov 2012
[Learning from errors: applying aviation safety concepts to medicine].
Health care safety levels range below other complex industries. Civil aviation has throughout its history developed methods and concepts that have made the airplane into one of the safest means of mass transport. ⋯ This applies particularly to including the topic of safety into relevant curricula. Physicians are obliged by the oath"primum nil nocere" to act, but economic as well as political pressure will eventually confine professional freedom if initiative is not taken soon.
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Der Urologe. Ausg. A · Nov 2012
[Introduction of operating room checklists as a part of clinical risk management: are there hard facts on complication prevention available?].
For approximately the past 10 years the aspects of quality and risk management have spread widely not only into the realm of hospitals but also into overall general medicine, which is viewed by many physicians as a paradigmatic change. The required use of the WHO operating room (OR) checklist has in the meantime become routine procedure in many hospitals but with varying degrees of acceptance. Current data reaffirm the positive effect of the checklist in lowering complication and mortality rates. This effect can be directly traced to a higher level for safety culture in the OR.
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Studies have shown for many years that the cause of errors or patient injury is in a high proportion of cases to be found under human factors. Human factors include all those factors which determine the safety and capabilities of humans especially in complex situations or systems. Up to now this topic has barely been systematically dealt with in training and there is a large deficit. ⋯ Professional performance at the highest level can only be expected from teams which regularly participate in team training for critical situations. In addition to simulation training with human factors, other aspects of patient safety are also essential. The concept of high reliability organizations (HRO) could make an important contribution in the sense of a safe hospital concept and includes the collection and analysis of critical incidents (critical incident reporting system CIRS) as well as the focus on the system of patient safety instead of individual persons and errors.
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Der Urologe. Ausg. A · Nov 2012
[Cases from the expert commission of the North Rhine medical council: expert commissions and arbitration boards by medical councils].
Following a description of the structure and function of the expert commission for medical malpractice of the North Rhine medical council, important legal technical terms and the consequences, such as the definition of accusable medical malpractice and severe (in legal terms gross) negligence will be presented. The article reports on the legal consequences of the lack of informed consent, on the significance of insufficient informed consent and under which conditions a transfer of liability becomes valid. From the statistical information in the archives of the expert commission it can be seen that in processes against urologists approximately 31% of urologists in private practice were affected compared to 69% of hospital urologists. ⋯ For processes due to operative treatment errors prostate cancer also occupied first place, followed by accusations of treatment errors involving penile and urethral operations. A differentiated presentation of processes involving non-operative treatment errors revealed an accumulation of accusations for mistakes in the treatment of urolithiasis, in medicinal treatment and also in tumor therapy. Following a description of typical individual cases, indications for avoidance of legal proceedings will be given.