We’ve mention on this blog before how much money could be saved if doctors didn’t have to practice defensive medicine and on the trials of medical malpractice. But, beyond cost saving and healthcare reform there is a human face associated with medical errors. The price of a mistake made by a doctor or nurse goes deeper than a million dollar settlement, not only for the patient and their family, but for the person who made the mistake as well. Today’s Wall Street Journal has an excellent article about adapting a hospital’s culture to not only prevent errors, but to treat clinicians fairly when something does go wrong.

Hospitals are taking what might seem like a surprising approach to confronting [medical errors]: Not only are they trying to improve safety and reduce malpractice           claims, they’re also coming up with procedures for handling-and even consoling-staffers who make inadvertent mistake…”We know punishing human error does not improve safety,” says St. Mary’s Dr. Byrne. “But we have to separate unavoidable error from reckless behavior and unjustifiable risk.”                                                     “The Informed Patient: New Focus on Averting Errors: Hospital Culture”

The article focuses on David Marx who founded a community, Just Culture, which promotes the development of “open, fair, and just cultures that are supportive of system safety by facilitating open communication within the organization, while working within a system of accountability that supports safe behavioral choices among staff.”

While the world is focusing on healthcare reform for a variety of reasons including providing healthcare to those who can’t afford it, we shouldn’t lose sight of the other encompassing problems in the system. When patient safety isn’t a priority it affects more than just the patient.