Anesthesia has arguably done more to transform modern medicine than anything else – including penicillin. Anesthesia enables countless surgeries and procedures to take place that people couldn’t otherwise endure.
However, the administration of anesthesia is a complicated process, and errors can have severe – if not fatal – consequences for patients. Studies indicate that there are numerous causes of anesthesiology errors, but three stand out for their frequency:
1. Incorrect dosages
Administering the correct dosage of anesthesia is critical to patient safety. Too much anesthesia can lead to respiratory distress, brain damage or death – while too little can cause a patient to wake up in the middle of surgery.
Incorrect dosages are often caused by simple mathematical errors, such as when an anesthesiologist doubles the calculated dose that a patient needs based on their age, weight and medical conditions.
2. Substitution errors
Substitution errors happen when the wrong medication is administered instead of the intended anesthetic – and they are entirely preventable.
This can happen due to similar packaging, labeling errors or simply because the human being involved in administering the drug was in a rush.
3. Poor communication
One of the biggest contributors to anesthesiology errors is the simple failure by medical staff members to get the patient’s relevant information and pass it along.
If, for example, the surgeon forgets to tell the anesthesiologist that they gave the patient a sedative for their nerves before surgery, that can lead the anesthesiologist to make mistakes later when they don’t account for that drug in the patient’s system.
Patients can suffer from allergic reactions to overdoses when anesthesia errors are made. It’s even possible for patients to get too little anesthesia, leading to horrifying awareness and pain during surgeries – and significant long-term emotional distress.