According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, it takes the average medical doctor 11 to 16 years of schooling before they are ready to practice medicine. It’s because of this very reason that so many doctors and health care professionals value their medical license. It’s also why so many get anxious and fearful after medical mistakes.
As we’re sure many of our Pennsylvania readers are already aware, medical mistakes can cause a doctor or medical professional to lose their license, which can be incredibly devastating to say the least. This is why so many doctors and medical professionals work so hard to prevent such mistakes from occurring in the first place. This can be taxing, though, which is why we’re asking the question above:
Could monitoring help doctors avoid making costly mistakes?
As one Canadian study from 2014 suggests, the answer may be yes. Highligthed in an article by HealthDay, 58 percent of health care workers said they were more conscious of their hand hygiene practices when they knew they were being watched. A resounding 88 percent even said they felt more motivated to wash their hands if they knew they were being monitored.
Because things like poor hand hygiene can lead to hospital infections or other medical mistakes that could then potentially lead to a challenge of a doctor’s medical license, this study may be incredibly important to many of our Philadelphia readers. It begs the question though: Could monitoring help in other medical situations? The answer may be yes though as you can probably imagine, an increase in monitoring does mean an increase in evidence collection, which could prove problematic in medical malpractice cases and necessitate the need for legal representation.
Source: The Association of American Medical Colleges, “Deciding on a Career in Medicine,” Accessed Sept. 17, 2015