Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: Although significant advances have been made in scientific and medical technology, but the rate of medical complaints has also risen. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of handling of medical malpractice cases in the hospital complaints committee on the reduction of patient complaints to law enforcement authorities.
Methods: In this descriptive study, patients complained about ophthalmology from April 2005 to December 2005 at Farabi Hospital, Tehran, were evaluated. The complainant's patients, if confirmed by the trusted doctors, were invited to complaints committee, and the subject of the complaint was examined and tried to obtain patient satisfaction.
Results: A total of 87 patients complained to ophthalmologists completed a complaint form 71 (81.7%) of the cases were male. Statistically, the number of complaints was significantly lower in those with lower education (P=0.02). The prevalence of primary disease, 52 cases (59.8%) was cataract and 14 cases (16%) due to refractive errors and refractory surgery. In the examination of complaints by trusted doctors in the hospital, 11 cases of ophthalmologic error were identified, with a mantle rate of 12.6%, and the cases were reviewed by the complaints committee. Of the cases of complained that confirmed by the committee, only one person sued the law enforcement, which represented 9% of the defaulted item. These statistics showed a significant decline compared to the past year at the same center, and the percentage of defaults to law enforcement was 37.5% (P<0.05).
Conclusion: Establishing committees to handle complaints of ophthalmologic failures in hospitals and providing a clear and honest atmosphere to hear the subject of complaints by patients and their companions, and then trying to get patients' satisfaction and helping them continue their treatment can lead to reduced complaints of patients to the authorities Legal, like forensics medicine department and medical council. 

Background: Hypoglycemia is a condition when blood glucose level is lower than 70 mg/dl in people without diabetes. The symptoms of hypoglycemia include tachycardia, sweating, pallor, pupillary dilatation. Hypoglycemia is a non-lethal and often preventable clinical problem in non-diabetic patients that can occur during fasting or after dining.
Case presentation: A 52 years old man referred to Shohada-e-Tajrish Hospital, Tehran, with diagnosis of kidney stones candidate for percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL). The patient underwent general anesthesia and after 40 minutes, the surgeon requested injection of tranexamic acid because of bleeding, but unintentionally the patient received 100 unites of crystalline insulin by nurse anesthesia. Vital signs were stable, the patient's blood glucose was 85 mg/dl and he had no sweat. Then the therapeutic intervention consisted of administering a bolus dose of 50 cc 50% dextrose water (DW) and then infusion of 50% dextrose water over that time. The patient was monitored for 10 hours in recovery and also received 1 mg of glucagon. The blood glucose was checked frequently. Fortunately, there were not any detectable hypoglycemic attacks (blood glucose less than 70 mg/dl) during that time. Throughout the first three hours in ICU, he suffered from severe hypoglycemic episodes and treated by DW 50% (bolus stat and infusion) and after stabilization of vital signs he transferred to ward.
Conclusion: The mortality of iatrogenic hypoglycemia is lower than other causes of hypoglycemia. However, on time diagnosis and aggressive treatment can prevent serious complications. In addition, proper communication between health care providers and precise checking of drugs labels before injection can dramatically decrease these events.

Background: Medical malpractice is one of the most important legal issues in medicine committed more or less by physicians. The medical staff has inadequate or deficient awareness of medical errors and their importance. Therefore, this study investigated the frequency of medical malpractices/errors resulting in death in files referred to the Iranian Legal Medicine Organization.
Methods: The study population in this descriptive cross-sectional research consisted of all doctors who had been sued in Tehran's Legal Medicine Organization (Forensic Committees of Tehran Province) from the first day of July 2018 to the end of December 2018. The study was carried out in and under supervision and support of the Legal Medicine Research Center. Data were collected using a checklist of the files from Tehran's Legal Medicine Organization.
Results: The results showed that most medical errors are of organizational types. Major medical failures occur in university-affiliated hospitals among the male technical staff aged 41-50 years with a work experience less than 6 years. Most complaints were recorded against general practitioners, general surgeons, and anesthesiologists, respectively. The smallest percentage of the complaints related to orthopedics, urologists, and ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialists.
Conclusion: The results of the study indicated that most of medical failures have of an organizational nature and occur in university hospitals among male technical officials who are in the fifth decade of life with a low work experience. So, paying attention to these issues can help the better selection of technical officials. The technical authorities of the hospitals must be careful about the responsibilities given to them. In order to reduce the failure of the technical authorities of the hospitals, doctors with a high standard of service should be appointed as technical officers. These doctors ought to possess legal knowledge and be familiar with the course of complaints filed in the judiciary.

Background: Medical errors are those errors or mistakes committed by healthcare professionals due to errors of omission, errors in planning, and errors of execution of a planned healthcare action whether or not it is harmful to the patient. Medical error in hospitals increases morbidity and mortality and decreases patient satisfaction and hospital productivity. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of medical errors in Iranian hospitals.
Methods: This study was conducted using systematic review and meta-analysis approaches. All articles written in English and Persian on the prevalence of medical errors in Iranian hospitals up to March 2019 were searched in Web of Science, PubMed, Elsevier, Scopus, Magiran, IranMedex and Scientific Information Database (SID) databases, and Google and Google Scholar search engines. In addition, reference lists of the retrieved papers were hand-searched. A total of 9 studies matching the inclusion criteria were identified, reviewed, and analyzed using comprehensive meta-analysis software.

Background: Medical errors are those mistakes committed by healthcare professionals due to wrong execution of a planned healthcare action or execution of a wrong healthcare action plan whether or not it is harmful to the patient. Medical errors may cause patients to suffer and have huge financial costs for the healthcare system. Identifying and measuring medical errors and adverse events are essential for improving patient safety. The objectives of this research were to measure medical errors and adverse events rates, to identify their severity and also analyze their underlying causes in a general educational hospital in Tehran, Iran by using The Global Trigger Tool.
Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional, and retrospective approach was used in this study. The medical records of 377 hospitalized patients between April 2015 and March 2016 were examined using simple random sampling method. Patient’s records were reviewed by a nurse using The Global Trigger Tool. Then, a physician authenticated the findings of the adverse events and rated their severity. The causes of adverse events were identified using brain storming and Ishikawa Cause And Effect Diagram.

Background: Medical malpractice is a serious problem in the health care system. This study aimed to review the medical negligence in Iran.
Methods: Based on the PRISMA checklist, a search for scientific records was done separately by two researchers. All the articles that had selection criteria were evaluated in terms of methodological quality. Medical malpractice was assessed in four main divisions including negligence, Lack of skill, Carelessness and non-compliance with government regulations). The bias test was performed using the Egger’s test. Revman software was used to analyze the data.
Results: In the present study, 25 studies that examined the country's medical malpractice from April 1994 to March 2018 were included in the meta-analysis. Negligence has been implicated in 1,105 cases of the 2,068 claims. Lack of skill in 255 out of 2068 cases, 432 cases of carelessness and 244 cases of non-compliance with government regulations Were recorded the results of the meta-analysis showed that OR negligence was 0.76 (CI 95%: 0.66-0.87), lack of skill was 0.61 (CI 95%: 0.49-0.76), carelessness was 0.62 (CI 95%: 0.50-0.76) and non-compliance with government regulations was 0.66 (95% CI: 0.60-0.73). In the review of the confirmed negligence ratio of the registered complaint files, only 19 studies mentioned this ratio. The results of the meta-analysis of these 19 studies showed that the OR ratio of the confirmed negligence of complaints was 0.6 (95% CI: 0.41-0.86). From all claims, General surgeons had OR of confirmed medical malpractices, equal to 0.47 (CI 95%: 0.37-0.60), gynecologists with OR equal to 0.49 (CI 95%: 0.36-0.66), general practitioners with OR equal to 0.43 (CI 95%: 0.30-0.63) and orthopedic specialists with an OR of 0.44 (CI 95%: 0.32-0.61).

Background: Medical errors are one of the biggest problems of the health system in countries. Identifying the factors responsible for these errors is crucial to designing optimal strategies to reduce such occurrences. The aim of this study was to investigate the type and nature of medical errors.
Methods: In this cross-sectional descriptive study, all documented medical errors that occurred between March 2021 and February 2022 at Firoozgar Educational and Medical Center were thoroughly examined. The data collection involved reviewing records from various departments within the center to ensure a comprehensive analysis of error types. The extracted data were processed and analyzed using SPSS v.22 software, allowing for statistical evaluation and identification of potential patterns or trends in medical errors over the specified period.

Results: A total of 214 cases were reviewed. 45.3% of the recorded medical errors occurred in the morning shift, 20.6% in the evening shift and 34.1% in the night shift. The highest number of medical errors was reported by nurses (40.7%), followed by physicians (16.8%) and paramedics (11.7%). The etiology of most medical errors was systemic errors (63.6%) followed by pharmacological errors (15.4%) and technical errors (13.1%) and the most reported systemic errors were of insufficient supervision. Most of the patients who had medical errors were admitted to the inpatient wards (40.7%) and later to the surgical wards (17.3%) and ICU (12.6%). 62.1% of medical errors did not cause any specific complication and in 33.2% of cases, mild complication, 10.7% moderate complication and 3.3% severe complication occurred for patients. 62.1% of medical errors had no consequences for anyone, and in 36.9% of cases, the consequences of errors were to the patient and 1% of the consequences of errors were to the organization and employees. Conclusion: Most of the reported medical errors were performed by nurses and were uncomplicated errors. Establishing transparent and accurate self-reporting systems is essential to identify medical errors of all employees.