On Saturday, September 2, 2017 at 4:16:47 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/2/2017 12:12 PM, AMuzi wrote:
On 9/2/2017 10:34 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-...b_5266944.html

OK, there's that.
But roughly 90,000 people went into a hospital last year and were killed
there by hospital acquired infection.

Unlike Black Helicopters, that cannot be mitigated by a tinfoil hat.

I've mentioned this before, but some years ago I read a book dealing
with risks and corporate cultures. It was recommended to me by an
engineering colleague. Sorry, I can't recall the title.

I remember chapters devoted to the tremendous increase in safety of air
travel, beginning during World War II but continuing into commercial
aviation. Supposedly a big contributor was instituting a system by which
pilots could anonymously report things like near misses, near mistakes
(like grabbing the control for flaps instead of landing gear), or just
good ideas for making things better. Crucial was a high-ranking team
that evaluated all those reports and acted on most of them. Anonymity
was also crucial, since no pilot wanted to risk his career by admitting
that he'd nearly killed a planeload of people.

The book had a chapter on hospitals, and pointed out that a few
hospitals have somewhat similar programs, and they have much better
outcomes because of them. But the book claimed most hospitals have a
very different culture, in which surgeons are treated like demigods. In
those, a nurse or anesthesiologist would never report that a surgeon
didn't scrub properly before an operation, or otherwise violated
procedures or made mistakes.

This was confirmed for me just yesterday. My physician (who's very
friendly with me) said he'd initially planned to be an anesthesiologist.
He gave up the idea after seeing how the surgeons he'd have to work with
abused other staff members and absolutely never admitted to mistakes.

The summary, I guess, is that it's possible to fix the problem of
hospital-acquired infections. But it's not going to come from posters
saying "Try to do better," which is as far as things go in most
hospitals. It's going to take some institutional changes - changes that
I'm sure lots of people would decry as just more bureaucracy.

I had cataract surgery a month or so ago. The anesthesiologist forgot to give me a second dose before the surgery so that I jumped when the blade was inserted into my eye. I suppose that if I were the kind I could sue. But when you're pumping a patient through every 30 minutes all day long these things are bound to happen.