On “The Quality in Australian Health Care Study”
To the Editor,
This letter is written to comment on the article “the quality in Australia healthcare study” by Wilson RM, Runciman WB, Gibberd RW, Harrison BT, Newby L, and Hamilton JD in the summer 1995 0f the journal.
About the quality in Australia health care
The authors did this research in order to determine the rate and population of injury for patients which results from the management of patients in the healthcare hospitals in Australia. It has been reported that 20% of these injuries have been fatal due to malpractice litigation and negligence of the healthcare workers. I second this idea of researchers in that some of the health care workers tend not to be serious in their duties. The targeted population gave the best Sample as the adverse event can occur to any age or sex. By obtaining samples from both private and public hospitals also showed that the probability of the results to be used for further studies will be high. An overall of 28 hospitals were appraised and a minimum of 520 entitled admissions from each hospital were randomly selected. It took a maximum of four weeks for registered nurses and medical officers to manage the review process (3).
The idea of registered nurses screening medical records to determine whether there is evidence showing that adverse event occurred made the research to be more dependable in that they scrutinized the data slowly without any panic so as to get the right evidence. Then two medical officers would further examine and analyze the screened data.
Data evaluation
After the two medical officers reviewed the screened data they are the one who determined whether there was presence of an adverse event or not and if present provide its preventability (2). The presence of adverse event was ascertained by these two medical officers whereby 20% of the data scrutinized showed presence of adverse event. The remaining samples required third review where there was a disagreement about the presence of adverse event.
The presence of disagreements was due to some missing records in the documentation omitted by the medical officers. The consideration of screening process was great and the specificity lesser (1).The medical records were satisfactory for approximating adverse events and their magnitudes. There were some ironies due to some omitted components in the medical records, sensitivity of screening process and also lack of adverse events(4).
References
1.de, Vries EN, MA Ramrattan, SM Smorenburg , DJ Gouma, and MA Boermeester. “The incidence and nature of in-hospital adverse events: a systematic review.” BMJ Quality & Safety, 2008: 216-223.
2.Kohn , LT, J Corrigan , and MS Donaldson . To err is human: building a safer health system. Washington, DC: National academy press, 2000.
3.Landrigan,, et al. “Temporal trends in rates of patient harm resulting from medical care.” New England Journal of Medicine, 2010: 2124-2134.
4.Ross, Wilson, Runciman William, Gibb Robert , Harrison Bernadette, Newby Liza, and Hamilton John . “Australian Health Care Study.” THE MEDICAL JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIA Vol 163 (1995): 459-471.