Mistakes: do we learn from them? Part II

In my previous post, I shared my view on how CEO’s and managers discuss mistakes in their executive coaching sessions with me.  I pointed out how much the discussions focused on the emotional consequences of the mistake and not the underlying cognitive process.  I offered that my own profession of clinical psychology didn’t do a particularly good job either in handling mistakes. In today’s comments, I’ll examine some of the changes that are reducing medical mistakes before I present a model for us all.

Errors in medicine; torts and traps

In contrast to Psychology, there is more consistence about what interventions will cure or kill a medical patient.  However, the variability in each patient’s presentation with only partial overlap with group-based diagnostic criteria makes the environment ripe for mistaking the condition and providing the wrong treatment. Even the right treatment can initiate a chain of side effects that becomes as serious as the original problem.  Given this inherent complexity plus the fact medical decisions are often split-second decisions made by stressed and tired medical professionals, it is not surprising that errors occur.  We have documented evidence for the magnitude of the problem; the US Institute of Medicine estimated that 44,000 to 98,000 patients succumb to medical errors each year in the US.

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Mistakes · Reacting to errors