Shunyi clinic researches medical errors

Beijing Shunyi Hospital is pioneering new research into the effects of human errors in medical treatment, one of the first Chinese hospitals to look at this issue.

In conjunction with Australian health institutions, the hospital is looking at ways to mitigate the impact of problems stemming from medical errors, adverse reactions to drugs or treatment procedures, or even wrongly prescribed drugs, said Shunyi district health bureau.

Liang Minghui, director of the National Institute of Hospital Administration, said at a seminar Sunday that there was no reporting system for injury caused by preventable human error or system failures at many hospitals in China, which could endanger patients' lives, according to a Beijing Morning Post report yesterday.

In Australia, population around 22 million, there are at least 1 million such cases reported annually. But there are only 2,000 cases per year in China on the record, according to the report.

"That's an extremely small number compared to our population, but probably it's because there's no record of these cases, as many medical records attributing problems to healthcare management are buried inside the hospitals," said Ma Yanming, deputy publicity director with the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau.

Yesterday, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital and Beijing Union Medical College Hospital said they could not provide statistics of illness that resulted from the complications of medical treatment over the last two years.

Yang Jinqiang, director of the quality management center of Shunyi hospital said they were researching into adverse effects resulting from treatment, not the actual disease.

"Australian hospitals have a variety of ways to survey system failures which harm patients, down to checking on bathing facilities or that waiting times for check-ups are not too long," Yang told the Post.

Cui Xiaobo, professor at Capital Medical University yesterday said the deaths directly resulting from drug adverse reactions in Chinese hospitals is "somewhat higher than in Western countries."

The figures reached 200,000 per year on average, revealed the Chinese Medical Association in January 2011, according to a report from Chinanews.com on January 3, 2011.

"The medical care system is a very risky business, also a complex system. There are ethical, technical and system imperatives to find out what went wrong in the case of a medical error," said Cui

"It's very crucial to improve medical safety in our country, to regain mutual trust between doctors and patients," said Cui.