The cost of clinical negligence claims continues to rise, despite efforts to reduce this now ageing burden to the National Health Service (NHS) in England. From a welfarist perspective, reforms are needed to reduce avoidable harm to patients and to settle claims fairly for both claimants and society. Uncertainty in the estimation of quanta of damages, better known as financial settlements, is an important yet poorly characterised driver of societal outcomes. This reflects wider limitations to evidence informing clinical negligence policy, which has been discussed in recent literature. There is an acute need for practicable, evidence-based solutions that address clinical negligence issues, and these should complement long-standing efforts to improve patient safety. Using 15 claim cases from one NHS Trust between 2004 and 2016, the quality of evidence informing claims was appraised using methods from evidence-based medicine. Most of the evidence informing clinical negligence claims was found to be the lowest quality possible (expert opinion). The extent to which the quality of evidence represents a normative deviance from scientific standards is discussed. To address concerns about the level of uncertainty involved in deriving quanta, we provide five recommendations for medico-legal stakeholders that are designed to reduce avoidable bias and correct potential market failures.

Background: The emergency department (ED) is an at-risk area for medical error. We measured the frequency and characteristics of patients with unanticipated death within 7 days of ED discharge and whether medical error contributed. Aim Statement: This study aimed to calculate the frequency of patients experiencing death within 7 days after ED discharge and determine whether these deaths were related to their index ED visit, were unanticipated, and whether possible medical error occurred. Measures & Design: We performed a single-centre health records review of 200 consecutive cases from an eligible 458,634 ED visits from 2014-2017 in two urban, academic, tertiary care EDs. We included patients evaluated by an emergency physician who were discharged and died within 7 days. Three trained and blinded reviewers determined if deaths were related to the index visit, anticipated or unanticipated, or due to potential medical error. Reviewers performed content analysis to identify themes. Evaluation/Results: Of the 200 cases, 129 had sufficient information for analysis, translating to 44 deaths per 100,000 ED discharges. We found 13 cases per 100,000 ED discharges were related and unanticipated deaths and 18 of these were due to potential medical errors. Over half (52.7%) of 129 patients displayed abnormal vital signs at discharge. Patients experienced pneumonia (27.1%) as their most common cause of death. Patient characteristic themes were: difficult historian, multiple complaints, multiple comorbidities, acute progression of chronic disease, recurrent falls. Provider themes were: failure to consider infectious etiology, failure to admit high-risk elderly patient, missed diagnosis. System themes included multiple ED visits or recent admission, no repeat vital signs recorded. Discussion/Impact: Though the frequency of related and unanticipated deaths and those due to medical error was low, these results highlight opportunities to potentially enhance ED discharge decisions. These data add to the growing body of ED diagnostic error literature and emphasize the importance of identifying potentially high risk patients as well as being cognizant of the common medical errors leading to patient harm.

Introduction: About 3-8% of fractures are missed in the adult emergency department (ED). No study has examined this in a pediatric ED. Such data is essential to quality improvement. We sought to determine the proportion of missed fractures on x-rays in a pediatric ED, the location of missed fractures and associated factors, and if missed fractures were clinically significant. Methods: We did a retrospective cohort study from Jan 1 to Dec 31, 2013 of 1000 pediatric patients with a fracture on x-ray in our academic pediatric ED. We randomly reviewed radiologist reports to find new fractures. A fracture was missed if identified by the radiologist but not the ED physician. Data was collected on patient, fracture, department and physician characteristics and change in management or complications. Descriptive statistics were used for clinical characteristics. The proportion of missed fractures was computed using the Wilson score method. Factors associated with missed fractures were investigated using chi-squared test. Results: Of 1000 x-rays, 19.4% (95% CI 17.0-22.0%) had at least one fracture missed. However, when possible fractures were removed for further analysis, 13.9% (95% CI 11.7-16.5%) were missed. The bones most associated with missed fractures were pelvis (60%,) carpal (50%,) vertebra (42.9%,) and patella (33.3%) (p<0.001.) However, these accounted for only 12.5% of missed fractures whereas ulna (31.3%,) metatarsal (14.1%,) phalynx of the hand (9.4%,) and fibula (7.8%) accounted for the greatest number of missed fractures. The fracture types most associated with a missed fracture were styloid, Salter-Harris IV, Salter-Harris I, compression, avulsion and buckle (p<0.001.) The presence of multiple fractures was associated with missed fractures (35.0% vs 7.2%, p<0.001) as was older age (11.2 vs 9.5 years, p=0.001). Most missed fractures were not clinically significant (71.9%) but some required splinting or limitation of activities. One had decreased function at 2 months. Conclusion: Overall, the proportion of missed fractures is higher than in adults, stressing difficulties with reading pediatric x-rays. Most missed fractures were not of clinical significance. Carpal, patella, vertebra and pelvis fractures were particularly challenging but were also rare. Ulna, metatarsal, phalynx of the hand and fibula accounted for the greatest number of missed fractures. More education may help improve physician skills in recognizing these fractures.

While the medical ethics literature has well explored the harm to patients, families, and the integrity of the profession in failing to disclose medical errors once they occur, less often addressed are the moral and professional obligations to take all available steps to prevent errors and harm in the first instance. As an expanding body of scholarship further elucidates the causes of medical error, including the considerable extent to which medical errors, particularly in diagnostics, may be attributable to cognitive sources, insufficient progress in systematically evaluating and implementing suggested strategies for improving critical thinking skills and medical judgment is of mounting concern. Continued failure to address pervasive thinking errors in medical decisionmaking imperils patient safety and professionalism, as well as beneficence and nonmaleficence, fairness and justice. We maintain that self-reflective and metacognitive refinement of critical thinking should not be construed as optional but rather should be considered an integral part of medical education, a codified tenet of professionalism, and by extension, a moral and professional duty.

A large body of literature devoted to “patient safety” and error prevention exists and utilizes a nomenclature that can be applied specifically to the field of congenital cardiac disease and aid in the goals of increasing the safety of patients, decreasing medical error, minimizing mortality and morbidity, and evaluating quality of care. The purpose of this manuscript is to suggest and document a quality of health care taxonomy and the appropriate application of this nomenclature of “patient safety” to the specialty of congenital cardiac disease, with special emphasis on the following ten terms: morbidity, complication, medical error, adverse event, harm, near miss, iatrogenesis, iatrogenic complication, medical injury, and sentinel event. Each of these terms is commonly utilized in the medical literature without universal agreement on their meaning and relationship. It is our hope that the standardization of the definitions of these terms, as they are applied to the analysis of outcomes of the treatments applied to patients with congenital and paediatric cardiac disease, will facilitate improved methodologies to assess and improve quality of care in our profession.