The problem with the health care system right now is that there are too many patients and not enough personnel.
Not to mention the fact that nurses, doctors, and even administrators make mistakes too.
The massive amount of paperwork can be a nightmare just for ONE patient. Throw that into the mix of hundreds to thousands of patient profiles that are kept on record and you can understand how things might be a little haywire when it comes to being accurate.
Rest assured, however: nurses are trained to look after patients when they do their checkups. They have to monitor the machines that put out the vitals (blood pressure, pulse, respiration rate), check IV bags and IV sites for infiltration, infection, and/or other complications, and make sure that the patient is being cared for in the best way possible. It's horrible but the reality is that nurses are pushed too hard or become lackadaisical in the fact that they have to check each and every little detail of a patient to confirm that all is well.
One of the best things to do is to perform a physical and vitals checkup to make sure that a patient is good to go and hasn't developed any problems since the last visit. Realistically-speaking, this doesn't happen because of time constraints and a lack of manpower, or even the seeming case that one doesn't need to be done. One good story that I've learned was that during our rotations in medic school, a medic was going through the motions of physical examination and upon examining the abdomen of a patient, found an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). (If you're not familiar with the term, an abdominal aortic aneurysm is a weak section of the inferior vena cava (where blood flows back to the heart to become reoxygenated) where blood starts to pool and swell that section of the vena cava. Over time, this swelled portion can burst and cause massive internal hemmoraghing, killing the patient via blood loss. There isn't anything that you can do once this happens, so to catch it at an early stage is critical. That medic saved that patient's life just by doing a simple physical examination. And I can almost guarantee that most nurses don't perform this examination on patients mostly because they are concious, would refuse, or the procedure just seems redundant.
Aside from physical examination, the vitals are the most important, as they are the basis statistics to show a patient's condition.
Keep in mind that this study for iatrogenic death is to bring awareness on the topic, not cast a dark shadow on the medical field. Our health care system is the best that it can be, but people tend to cling with the negative results and run with it.
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