KARACHI: Medical experts say that medical errors occur even in the world’s best institutions because they are human errors.
“A medical error can’t be concealed,” said Prof Farhat Moazzam of the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT). “You [doctors] must respect your patients,” she urged.
Explaining the ethical perspective, Prof Moazzam said that one should also learn how to deal with the situation if it occurs at any level, urging that impartiality should be given priority when making medical decisions.
The Patel hospital, in collaboration with the Karachi Bioethics Group (KBG), organised the book launch of a handbook titled ‘Understanding Medical Error’ at the Patel hospital on Friday where physicians, surgeons and senior doctors of different hospitals shared their points of view on the issue.
“The medical error is a fascinating and very complex issue,” said Dr Murad Moosa Khan of the Aga Khan University hospital. He said that genuine errors also occur in several hospitals, but when neglected and highlighted negatively in the media, it adversely affects doctors and other staff.
Giving a surgeon’s perspective, Dr Hasnain Zafar of the Patel hospital said that society always demands perfection. “The expectations of people [patients] are unrealistic,” he maintained. “One has to live with it forever if he makes a mistake.”
Sharing a physician’s perspective, another of Patel hospital’s senior doctors, Dr Muhammad Asif Jan, said that that errors and mistakes always occur. Those errors which happened 50 years ago don’t exist now and those which occur now will be removed after 50 years, he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 14th, 2015.
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