The astounding advancements in medical science and technology are facilitating the healthcare sector worldwide to grow rapidly. Healthcare specialists can now provide remarkably better and faster services to patients leveraging cutting-edge technology-equipped medical equipment.
Diagnosing and treating a myriad of physical and mental health issues in the most effective way is no more a challenge for medical professionals. Thanks to the advent of a wide range of advanced devices. However, there’s no denying that even the most experienced physicians commit mistakes while practicing medicine.
Nearly 4 million individuals of different ages sustain misdiagnosis-related injury every single year. This article throws light on crucial steps that professional radiologists take just after recognizing the error they have committed. A patient’s life could be at serious risk even if a radiology professional commits a minor mistake.
Admit the Wrongdoing
Almost every medical expert acknowledges the fact, or it is better to say that they strongly believe that the ideal way of checking errors while conducting diagnosis or treatment is to learn from the same. The possibilities of committing mistakes drop sharply when healthcare specialists, medical assistants, or nurses accept their faults and understand where they have gone wrong.
The rate of diagnostic mistakes in radiology decreases every time when radiologists admit the truth instead of denying mistakes that they make. Most radiology professionals make a couple of notable mistakes time and again, interpreting and communicating critical results to patients correctly.
Factors Contribute to Typical Errors in Radiology
Besides the need for rapid reporting, many other factors affect the performance of a radiologist. It is nearly impossible to stop these mistakes completely. However, combating the same is possible with the emergence of a host of modern technology-enabled diagnostic equipment.
Many times, radiologists fail to understand, explain and carry out a diagnosis on an abnormal health condition in a correct way just because it’s beyond their expertise. An increased number of cases, their complexities, and fatigue too adversely impact a radiologist.
Radiologists who don’t have many years of substantial practical experience are always at the risk of committing one or the other error while performing diagnosis. Just because an abnormality is in an unexpected area in the body, most of them often overlook it, and eventually, this act makes a patient experience a poor health condition.
Despite undergoing years of solid training, some radiologists make the satisfaction of search error. What happens is these radiology professionals fail to notice either one or the other finding that a radiology image includes. Most of these radiologists begin conducting a thorough evaluation of the diagnosed finding without having any knowledge of the presence of the second or unnoticeable finding.
Sometimes, instead of punishing the at-fault radiologist, the healthcare organization must try to identify whether the fault is with their diagnostic imaging systems, equipment, or procedures that they follow.
Things that Most Radiology Technicians Do after Making Errors
Taking Immediate Care of Patients
After realizing the mistake, it is essential for a radiologist to get in touch with the referring doctor to make sure that nothing serious happens to the patient. Taking such a step helps ameliorate the tense situation. Providing the appropriate care right after recognizing a diagnostic or reporting fault is imperative.
Accepting the Fault
People do make mistakes, regardless of their years of experience and expertise in medical or other fields. Radiologists responsible for committing an error have to admit the wrongdoing and learn from it. In addition, making patients or their family members informed of the same mistakes is something rads must do sooner than later.
Comply with Communication Protocols
Transparently reporting everything is something a radiologist responsible for committing a mistake is expected to do. However, doing this puts them at risk of facing a medical malpractice lawsuit and financial crisis. Hence, it is prudent to abide by the communication guidelines and risk alleviation policies of the radiology clinic, hospital, or nursing homes.
Look for Inconspicuous Findings
It is essential for rads guilty of making an error while diagnosing or interpreting a diagnostic image to identify hidden or emergent findings. Wrong interpretation by radiology technicians increases the rate of diagnostic error most of the time. It is only when the medical condition becomes worse and prominent, everyone learns about the responsible radiologist’s mistakes. Therefore, it is vital for rads to document the entire process of diagnosing undetected findings and prepare a report.
Radiologists must contact the clinician right away post identifying an error. Doing so will enable them to correct the diagnostic reports and pay utmost attention to patients. This step should be followed by effectively conducting risk management activities.
With each passing day, the number of radiology centers utilizing the sepstream® medical imaging software. The reason behind this is it helps radiologists produce highly accurate diagnostic imaging results.