Celebrate Patient Safety Awareness Week This March

Among the many awareness initiatives for different medical conditions is one campaign that benefits everyone: Patient Safety Awareness Week. The Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI) sponsors Patient Safely Awareness Week every March to highlight the importance of quality patient care and advocate for stronger protections to ensure the wellbeing of all. As long as medical errors and negligence remain a problem in Florida, across the country, and around the globe, the Patient Safety initiative will promote ways to put an end to patient harm caused by mistakes, so improvements are necessary across the board.

Patient Safety Awareness Week highlights preventable errors by health care providers, implicating Florida medical malpractice laws and legal remedies for patients, and aims to give patients the information they need to recognize and address issues of medical malpractice. 

Statistics Behind Patient Safety Initiatives 

Patient Safety Awareness Week is an opportunity to encourage everyone to learn more about safety in the health care environment. With this knowledge, organizers hope to inspire conversations and action to enhance all components of the system, patients, and the workforce.

The initiative is driven in part by some disturbing statistics on errors, carelessness, and failures at all levels of health care:

• The World Health Organization estimates that 134 million adverse events every year can be traced back to unsafe conditions in hospitals, primarily in lower income and lesser developed countries.
• Approximately 80 percent of patient harms during routine medical visits are preventable and should never have happened.
• Studies based in the US suggest that up to 400,000 patients die every year as a result of preventable medical errors.
  

Mistakes That Put Patient Safety at Risk 

Under Florida medical malpractice laws, negligence is defined as a health care provider’s departure from medically accepted standards in delivering care and making decisions. The baseline is what a hypothetical physician with the same training would have done under the same or similar circumstances. Some of the most common preventable errors include:

• Misdiagnosis, including delays and issuing the wrong diagnosis
• Surgical errors, such as leaving foreign objects inside the patient or slicing into adjacent tissue during a procedure
• Mistakes in ordering or administering medication
• Failure to diagnose and/or treat a serious medical condition
• Birth injuries
  

Contact Our Florida Medical Malpractice Attorneys for Legal Help 

If you suffered harm because of medical negligence by a Florida health care provider, it is essential to work with a lawyer who can assist with the legal process. Our team at Freidin Brown, P.A. is prepared to fight for your rights, so please contact our offices to speak to one of our Miami medical malpractice attorneys. We can set up a free consultation to assess your situation and determine how to move forward with your claim.

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ihi.org/Engage/Initiatives/Patient-Safety-Awareness-Week/Pages/default.aspx