In the high stakes environment of emergency departments (EDs), unintentional medical errors will likely always be inevitable. Busy, noisy, and often simply chaotic, EDs are fertile grounds for making diagnostic, procedural or medication errors that may place patient care at risk.

Clinicians and other health professionals often feel various adverse emotions after a medical error, including guilt, shame, anxiety, fear, and depression. Some scholars acknowledge the pervasive culture of perfectionism and individual blame in medicine as significant contributing factors to these harmful effects[1]. Others suggest that an essential element is the lack of peer and organisational support in the face of adverse patient outcomes[2]. These factors can contribute to poor practitioners’ well-being, burnout, depression, and decreased job satisfaction.

Tailored to support the development of clinical reasoning, teamwork and prioritisation skills outlined in the ACEM curriculum, this breakfast session will place you face to face with academic and healthcare expertise on practitioner resilience. The speakers will equip you with best practices to reduce the likelihood of medical errors in ED and effective strategies that you can implement in your practice to mitigate your clinico-legal risk.  

Learning outcomes

• Discuss the leading causes of medical errors in emergency departments.
• Identify effective strategies to minimise the risk of cognitive and non-cognitive errors and suboptimal care for any patient in the emergency setting.
• Discuss practical strategies to minimise your clinico-legal risk in the emergency setting.

[1]Fatima, S., Soria, S., & Esteban-Cruciani, N. (2021). Medical errors during training: how do residents cope?: a descriptive study. BMC Medical Education, 21(1), 1-6.

[2]Ozeke, O., Ozeke, V., Coskun, O., & Budakoglu, I. I. (2019). Second victims in health care: current perspectives. Advances in Medical Education and Practice, 10, 593.