Special course may help cut deaths due to medical errors

Special course may help cut deaths due to medical errors

News:

1. The article talks about incorporating  the Acute Critical Care Course (ACCC) to reduce the deaths caused due to medical negligence in India.

Important Facts:

2. About Acute Critical Care Course (ACCC):

• The concept of ACCC came into existence after England’s Hillsborough disaster, a fatal human crush during an FA Cup semi-final match in 1989 when over 96 people were killed and nearly 800 injured.
• Aim of ACCC: The ACCC aims to train the medicine specialists and the surgeons of various specialisation such as surgical, gynaecology, orthopaedics and emergency to suspect and identify patients at a risk of deterioration.
• ACCC is specially designed for those hospitals where doctors do not have practical knowledge about handling patients that require critical care.
• The comprehensive course includes imparting training to the new and existing doctors of a hospital receiving critical care patients to make them understand the crucial steps to prevent errors.
• This course takes care of prevention of small mistakes that make it life-threatening for the patient, be it administering IV fluids in patients, minor surgeries etc.
• ACCC can help the doctors to develop the technical and non-technical skills of managing such patients.

3. Mandatory in US and UK: The two-day course has become mandatory for surgical trainees both in the U.S. and the U.K., which annually lose over four lakh and 98,000 patients, respectively, due to medical errors.

4. India’s Case:

• A study by the Harvard University showed that nearly 50 lakh deaths occur in India annually due to medical errors triggered by lack of practical knowledge among the doctors and nurses to handle patients when brought to the hospital.
• According to estimates, implementing the ACCC in Indian hospitals, especially in the rural areas, can bring down the mortality rates due to medical negligence by nearly 50%.
• However, ACCC has not spread far and wide in India with only 450 doctors across the country completing the course, experts said.
• Even major hospitals, mostly in the rural belts, continue to ignore it despite most of the medical error cases causing death being reported in tier 2 and tier 3 cities where the concept of critical care does not exist.