Errors in Medicine

The Boston Globe is running an article entitled, "1 in 10 Patients Gets Drug Error." The article explains that according to a report, "...it makes financial sense for all hospitals to install a computerized ordering system, despite the $2.1 million up-front costs and more than $400,000 annual operating costs. The study estimated that the average victim of a medication error stays in the hospital at least four extra days. The researchers also looked at how often doctors at the six community hospitals ordered more expensive drugs when a cheaper, generic drug would do, or when they ordered an intravenous delivery of a medication when a less expensive oral pill would have been just as effective. Redundant lab tests were also documented."

Read the Article!!

Discussion Starters for Younger Children

Do your students think that they should be allowed to eat whatever food they want to eat, even without asking their parents? Why/why not? What bad things might happen if people ate too much food? Can students think of anything that they should never eat or drink? What? Why should they not eat or drink this?

Can your students explain what the number one means? Can they explain what it means to have two of something? How many eyes does a person have? What kinds of bad things might happen if one of a person's eyes did not work properly? Why would these things happen? What kinds of things should a person do/not do to take care of his/her eyes?

Do your students think that it would be worse to have one bad eye or one bad finger? Why? In what ways might a finger be hurt? What kinds of things should a person do/not do to take care of his/her fingers?

Do students think that being a doctor is an important job? Why/why not? What kinds of things does a doctor do? What kinds of things can we do for ourselves to help doctors keep us healthy?

Discussion Starters for Older Students

Some people argue that teaching hospitals are not as good as non-teaching hospitals since so much of the work is done by interns. How does the information presented in this article influence the argument? Challenge students to explain their perspectives and then consider opposing points of view.

Ask students to imagine a conversation between a hospital administrator, responsible for the hospital budget, and a health advocate urging a computerized prescription ordering system. Do students think that these individuals would have different perspectives? Why/why not?

Ask your students to respond to the following statement: "Ten percent is a low percentage so rather than seeing the negative stakeholders should be thrilled that patients were only given the wrong medicine ten percent of the time." In what ways might the fact that professional baseball players get out far more than 10% of the time that they are up influence one's understanding of this statistic with regard to this article?

Do students think that policymakers should mandate the use of computerized prescription programs? Why/why not?