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Medical Error 'Second Victims' Get Some Help, Finally
It's not always the caregiver who does something wrong to a patient who needs help. Often, it may be the impact of the unexpected death of a patient that someone got close to.
The volunteers try to cover every shift or unit within the seven-facility system through a 24-hour pager number, especially in "high-risk areas" such as intensive care units. Many have been second victims themselves.
Scott found that unexpected deaths of other hospital workers hit many of their colleagues hard. There was the young surgery tech who had leg pain in the morning, a pulmonary embolism in the afternoon, and was brain dead the next day. The tech's own team harvested her organs for transplant.
Or when the hospital helicopter crashed, giving two crew members that the staff knew well "career-ending injuries."
There were grief-stricken staff left behind, one lamenting that he had traded his shift with one of the victims, she recalls.
In mid 2011, Wu launched a similar program called the RISE (Resiliency In Stressful Events) Team, a crew of about 30 volunteers at Johns Hopkins. It started out as strictly a program for pediatric caregivers, and got some funding from the Josie King Foundation.
Wu says that Brigham and Women's Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston are developing similar programs, as is Stanford University Hospital. A few others are in the works.
I asked Wu and Scott if healthcare workers, especially those working with daily life and death hospital dramas, shouldn't be capable of dealing with these events. I'd always been told that that nurses and doctors, especially those working in medical and surgical intensive care units, had to be "hard core" because that's where many patients die.<
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Comments are moderated. Please be patient.
R.M. (1/18/2013 at 11:03 AM)
I know what it's like to be the family member of someone who's had a medical mistake made on them, and a healthcare worker who's life was devastated after being accused of a medical mistake. When you're the "first victim," you have options. There are support groups, sympathy, apologies, and many people seek legal action. In the case of the healthcare worker, you are singled out, silenced, and made to feel like you can't do the job you used to love. In many cases you lose your job and ability to support yourself and family, too. Healthcare facilities need to look at adverse events as ways to improve patient care facility-wide. If one person made an error in good faith, certainly it could happen again to someone else. Punishing the employee just spreads an attitude of fear to report errors. Thank you for this important, often overlooked aspect of healthcare.
Daniel Long (1/18/2013 at 9:41 AM)
Absolutely speechless!!! I could not have been more insulted. Second victim? Hospitals are irresponsible if they don't spend MORE money for patting the doctors on the head saying "Its OK, it is the patients fault, you are still godlike, besides it will cost us money to replace you if you don't push this out of your mind and keep the money coming in" Heck with the family, we already falsified the records, they will never know, and besides, we already have the Medical Boards blessing to cover this little incident up. Here, our next customer ($$$,$$$.$$) is waiting for you. ;-) You can quote me on that. Danny Long
Pat Spray (1/18/2013 at 9:40 AM)
As a "first victim" of a medical "oopsie" that landed me in a wheelchair for the rest of my life... what still galls me TO THIS DAY is that the prat who did it NEVER had the decency to say "sorry". I understand there are 1 million and 1 different decisions that could've been made and that hindsight is 20/20 (and means you only have a good view of your own butt). But if the medical professionals are ALL THAT TORE UP about us "poor first victims" - maybe the they should aim for closure for both of us! Express your regrets - let us see them in your eyes. Share your anguish so we can share ours and maybe it won't take so long (if ever) for us each to accept and move on.