New Jersey residents and others who are misdiagnosed by their doctors may experience a wide range of emotions such as fear or anger. A misdiagnosis can have a significant impact on a person’s life, and diagnostic errors are considered a significant problem in the medical community. One of the reasons why the problem exists is because some feel as if there is nothing that they can do to stop it.
However, the director for the Armstrong Institute Center for Diagnostic Excellence at Johns Hopkins Medicine believes that anyone can take action to improve patient outcomes. He says that hospitals should include diagnostic errors in their event reporting systems. Furthermore, hospitals should be sure to include a delayed diagnosis as a diagnostic error. In many cases, they are not included as long doctors eventually determine what is wrong with an individual.
Finally, the director said that individual doctor errors are really symptoms of a systemic problem. A report from the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine gave several recommendations that could help reduce diagnostic errors. For instance, doctors should be given a chance to learn from their previous mistakes. They should also receive better training in medical school to minimize their chances of allowing cognitive biases to cloud their judgement when diagnosing a patient.
Doctors who fail to diagnose a patient in a timely manner could be defendants in medical malpractice lawsuits. Malpractice might occur if a doctor makes an improper diagnosis despite having the tools and experience to reasonably do so. Those who believe that they are victims of malpractice may want to hire an attorney to help with their cases. An attorney may be able to help a person obtain a favorable outcome at trial or negotiate a settlement.
