It's Safe to Go to The Doctor, Right?

Many of my conversations with the parents of sick kids begin with "We went to the doctor to get his shots, and the next day he came down with..."  Sometimes the parents think the actual vaccinations made their child sick.  I remind them that the vaccines are very safe, but the office itself is an easy place to pick up an infection.  You can be infected directly by being coughed on by another patient in the waiting room, or by the nurse who forgot to wash his/her hands after touching the last sick kid! Here is a cold, hard fact:  hospitals and doctors' offices are less safe than flying on a commercial airplane.  The experts at the national Institute Of Medicine estimate that between 44,000 and 98,000 people die in US hospitals each year because of mistakes, mistakes like getting an infection while in the hospital, from the hospital staff.  That is the same amount of people who would die if two to three airliners fell out of the sky each day!  Who would fly if that were the case?  Hospitals and state and federal governments have been working hard to improve patient safety since that statistic came out in 1999.  They have begun initiatives to improve medication safety, doctor and hospital competence, and infection control.  I am proud to say that my hospital, Lafayette General, has been ahead in this game. There are things you can do to keep your child or other family member safe when they come to the hospital or go to the doctor's office.  Most important, make sure everyone who touches your loved one has washed their hands first.  Don't be afraid to ask if they did- that is your right!   Ask about every medication your child receives.  You should know about all your child's medications and why they are given.  Asking about the medications will help the doctors and nurses be sure that they are giving the right medication to the right patient for the right reasons.  If a child is going to be admitted to the hospital, make sure that that hospital and doctor have taken care of a lot of kids with that condition, or have done that particular procedure a lot.  When it comes to operations and taking care of kids, practice makes perfect.  Finally, when going into the hospital, make sure you know which doctor is in charge of your child's or other loved one's case.  Sometimes one or more specialists gets involved, and having one doctor to coordinate all those specialists is important.  When multiple doctors take care of a patient without one doctor watching that they aren't working at cross-purposes, things can fall through the cracks and mistakes happen.  In other words, too many cooks ruin the soup! We usually don't worry about being safe when we go the doctor or hospital, and things are improving behind the scenes to be sure we don't have to.  But patient safety is everyone's job, including your's.  Get involved!