Timeline Vodcast: Medical Misdiagnosis

Medical misdiagnosis (diagnostic error) affects quality of health care. The United States Institute of Medicine (IOM) defines an error in medicine to be the “failure of a planned action to be completed as intended (i.e., error of execution) and the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim (i.e., error of planning).

Medical misdiagnosis can include any variety of doctor, hospital, or other medical error that incorrectly identifies the patient’s problem. In most cases, medical errors are preventable, and diagnostic errors are no exception. A misdiagnosis may occur due to faulty systems, incorrect testing, or missed symptoms — Michael M. Wilson

Many lives had been affected by medical misdiagnosis leading to more critical and aggravated health conditions in patients. In many cases, permanent disabilities or irreversible health damage and even death had occurred. In healthcare field, doctors and other healthcare practitioners, healthcare institutions had been sued and had to battle legal cases following allegations of medical misdiagnosis.

This episode of Timeline takes a closer look at this issue once more in order to sensitize the public of the dangers of medical misdiagnosis and what could be done to curb it.

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