NUBE 2025

When errors are made in the practice of medicine the results can be devastating. Unfortunately, errors are all too common. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of patients die each year as a result of medical error, and medical error might be the third leading cause of death in the US, behind only heart disease and cancer.  Commonly cited risks for making errors are high workload, time pressure, multitasking, and multiple handoffs- all things that are extremely common in emergency psychiatry. Caring for patients with mental illness in crisis can certainly leave one prone to mistakes. Behavioral health patients in emergency departments have a longer length of stay, often causing their care to run over several shift, increasing the risk of handoff errors.  When mistakes are made in the care of patient in emergency psychiatry the results could not only cause immediate harm to the patients, or to the community, but can also have a long-lasting effect eroding the trust in a medical system that could provide them with help.  We will review the type of errors that are common in the field of emergency psychiatry through several case reviews, and spend the final half of the presentation discussing the recovery process.  We will review the literature and common practice around the responses to errors. We will look at the individual responses, with patients, with staff and with families, as well as systemic approaches to responding to errors. We will discuss some error prevention techniques that can easily be implemented in emergency departments.

Learning Objectives:

Attendees will be able to identify common causes for errors in the medical setting.

Attendees will learn skills for navigating responses to medical errors.

Attendees will learn techniques for error prevention in the emergency psychiatry setting.