Patient safety incidents were already a leading cause of death in Canada. With that crisis converging with the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic, health care is being pushed to a breaking point.
Despite protective apology legislation across Canada, many doctors and other health-care professionals remain too afraid or ashamed to apologize after medical errors.
Doctor depression, burnout and suicide have been rising for some time, and overwork was considered the norm. A health care lawyer explains why the legal and regulatory systems must intervene.
Litigation may sound like an obvious route for someone who experiences a medical injury. But it’s a lengthy and stressful process, and rarely provides relief to patients and their families.
Research shows that Indigenous women are at greatest risk of injury within Canada. Income, education and housing inequities play a role. So does systemic racism and post-colonial trauma.
A recent study suggesting that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. made headlines. But the methods researchers used to draw this conclusion are flawed.
In Australia, estimates suggest undesired harmful effects from medication or other intervention such as surgery occur in around 17% of hospital admissions. But blaming the doctors won’t help.
Should Australian health-care workers face criminal penalties if they wilfully or recklessly neglect or mistreat patients? The United Kingdom is currently grappling with this question after systemic failures…
Ethical issues are rife in medicine. Arguments about abortion, organ donation and euthanasia regularly take their turn in the headlines, normally prompted by media scare-stories or an arising controversy…
In health care, communication can be a matter of life or death. Take the case of an American woman diagnosed with a blood clot in her leg. She died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism the following day, while…
TRANSPARENCY AND MEDICINE – A series examining issues from ethics to the evidence in evidence-based medicine, the influence of medical journals to the role of Big Pharma in our present and future health…
Professor of Human Factors and Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange, Past President of Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, University of Nottingham