A study conducted by U of T and the University of Calgary suggests that nearly eight per cent of patients in Canadian hospitals suffer an injury or complication due to negligence on the part of healthcare management. After analyzing 3,745 randomly selected patient charts from 20 different acute-care hospitals across Canada, researchers found that most patient safety problems occurred during surgery.
Although the rate of adverse events were higher than the US’s national average of 2.9 per cent, Canada faired significantly better than Australia, which at 16.6 per cent, claimed top spot as the country with the highest number of adverse patient effects attributed to errors made by hospital officials.
According to Professor Ross Baker from the Health Policy, Management and Evaluation Department at U of T and lead investigator on the project, some of the key problems leading to adverse patient effects are preventable. Difficulties such as confusion between medications with similar names or appearance were partially responsible for some adverse patient effects. Problems like these, said Professor Peter Norton, head of family medicine at the University of Calgary, need to be solved using a system-wide approach to health care management.
Since the inception of national medicare, healthcare has consistently maintained its position atop Canadian political scrutiny. Growing concerns over wait times in hospital emergency rooms, wait times for surgical procedures, and the looming doctor shortage crisis, have compounded the results from the patient safety study, foreshadowing the beginning of what could become an even larger national crisis.
In recent years, publicity surrounding the impact of financial cutbacks on patient safety has reached unprecedented levels. In March of this year Dr. Jon Witt, former emergency room head at Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon, one of Saskatchewan’s largest hospitals, was fired after making comments suggesting that patient safety was being severely compromised by a lack of emergency-room resources. In a CBC interview conducted shortly after his termination, Witt pointed to “88 patients who all died within two days of being admitted to emergency,” claiming that “none of those patients were seen quickly enough to meet national guidelines for care.”
It was these controversial comments that resulted in Witt losing his post as head of emergency. In a March Globe and Mail report, Ronan Conlon, the region’s chief of medical staff, refuted Witt’s remarks, claiming that after reviewing patient files there was no validity to his statements.
As part of the continued commitment to excellence in medical student training, U of T’s Medical School is doing its part to train upcoming doctors to be aware of decisions made in the operating room. Dr. Stan Hamstra, Director of Surgical Education at U of T, indicates that the “apprenticeship-like” program at the medical school teaches students to understand operating room culture and “how to deal with different situations effectively and responsibly.”
However, in spite of appropriate training, doctors and nurses working in understaffed hospitals will continue to face increasing pressures to do more with less. According to Canadian Patient Safety Institute Chair Dr. John Wade, the problems plaguing Canada’s healthcare industry can only be solved by incorporating “a truly national effort that brings together health providers, educators and the public in a spirit of collaboration and problem-solving.”