Medical errors: Shocking statistics call for urgent action

Most recent WHO statistics report 43 million adverse medical events every year. At least half of these unexpected harmful incidents result from medical errors.The social and economic costs of this international “epidemic” are alarming:  132 billion US dollars per annum, or 2% of the global health care expenditures, with a higher probability of dying from a medical error than from breast cancer. And these figures may be an underestimation, considering that they do not include data from China and India.

The urgent need for an in-depth academic discussion of this subject has prompted the Institute of Communication and Health (ICH) of the University of Lugano in Switzerland (USI) to organize – for the first time in the world – a scientific conference with the leading experts from various disciplines (medicine, psychology, law, communication, ethics, and others) to join their research on this sensitive issue.The conference, COME 2013(“Communicating medical error”), is supported by the Swiss Medical Association (FMH), the Swiss Hospital Association (H+), the Swiss Patient Safety Foundation, and the Swiss Federal Department of Home Affairs (FDHA).

A special feature of the COME conference will be a public debate, hosted by the Institute of Communication and Health (ICH) and the Centro Stefano Franscini, which will take place on Thursday 21 March, at 8.30 p.m. on Monte Verità in Ascona (Ticino, Switzerland). The evening, moderated by well-known journalist and blogger Paolo Attivissimo, will consider the topic from three contrasting angles:Albert Wu(internist, Professor of Health Policy and Management, Director of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) will represent the view of the medical profession, together with Marcia Childress (Associate Professor of Medical Education at the University of Virginia, School of Law). Brian Stafford (recognized by the WHO for his patient safety efforts) will speak from the patient perspective, while USI professor Annegret Hannawa will represent the communicative approach to the problem.

This public event will be conducted in English, with simultaneous translation into Italian.Journalists who would like to attend are requested to contact the USI’s Communication and Media Department ([email protected]).Accommodation can be arranged for journalists coming from other parts of Switzerland or from abroad.

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COME:Communicating medical error (http://www.come.usi.ch/)

The COME conference is the first of its kind -- it joins 80 world-renowned experts from various academic disciplines and countries to share their ideas on all phases of doctor-patient interaction in the context of medical errors:from error prevention to identification, analysis and reporting –up to the delicate process of error disclosure.

Timely and competent communication can prevent further injury, mitigate patient distress, minimize the risk of litigation and strengthen public trust in the medical profession.The goal of the COME conference is to lay the foundation for a global, interdisciplinary investigation of the problem – with special emphasis on communication before, during and after the occurrence of medical errors.

During the five days of the conference, there will be three key speeches:Patient safety in 2013: reflections on progress and challenges in the field, by Prof.Kaveh Shojania, director of the British Medical Journal, Quality and Safety and director of the Centre for Patient Safety of the University of Toronto; Medical Incident Reporting Systems, what you can and cannot do with them, by Prof.Pham, doctor and researcher at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine; and Medical Error Disclosure, by Prof. Albert Wu, internist, Professor of Health Policy and Management and Director of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.In addition, the invited experts will engage in daily round table discussions on the future directions of each topic area.

The three keynote speakers, Prof. Hannawa (initiator of the COME conference), and all invited experts from the different disciplines are available for interviews. Here is a complete list of the speakers willing to talk with the media:

Keynote speakers: http://www.come.usi.ch/pages/speakers.html
Invited experts: http://www.come.usi.ch/pages/experts.html