Medical errors occur around 5% of admissions, sometimes resulting in serious outcomes. They tend to provoke lawsuits against healthcare workers, causing much concern. Nowadays in Korea, the number of lawsuits is increasing considerably, thus enhancing the need of solutions for this problem.Current Concepts: The present responses of healthcare workers in medical errors are denial. Patients become dissatisfied more against such attitude, increasing possibility of lawsuits. Therefore we need to adopt new strategies for solving this problem, which fortunately have been developed and applied over many countries.Discussion and Conclusion: The harmful results from medical errors can’t be presumed intentional. Further, error-prone culture of workplace act together in raising the events. So, the recent increasing trend of mindless legal judgements based upon considering the consequences of the events seem to be unreasonable. Safety culture being developed and established in many countries intends to prevent diverse adverse events and make trustworthy healthcare system. The major components of safety culture are (1) Frank disclosure of errors to meet the wishes of patients which corresponds to ethical responsibility regarding delegated medical work; (2) Just culture giving fair considerations to medical personnel regarding the errors; (3) Safety culture at the organizational level including incident reporting system which can only be worked well through the atmosphere of open communication and adherence to practice standards. However in Korea, considering realistic situations of patients having much distrust against medical personnel and thus easily making civil and criminal lawsuits, it would be more reasonable to put disproportionate legal lawsuits in order.

Medical errors occur around 5% of admissions, sometimes resulting in serious outcomes. They tend to provoke lawsuits against healthcare workers, causing much concern. Nowadays in Korea, the number of lawsuits is increasing considerably, thus enhancing the need of solutions for this problem.Current Concepts: The present responses of healthcare workers in medical errors are denial. Patients become dissatisfied more against such attitude, increasing possibility of lawsuits. Therefore we need to adopt new strategies for solving this problem, which fortunately have been developed and applied over many countries.Discussion and Conclusion: The harmful results from medical errors can’t be presumed intentional. Further, error-prone culture of workplace act together in raising the events. So, the recent increasing trend of mindless legal judgements based upon considering the consequences of the events seem to be unreasonable. Safety culture being developed and established in many countries intends to prevent diverse adverse events and make trustworthy healthcare system. The major components of safety culture are (1) Frank disclosure of errors to meet the wishes of patients which corresponds to ethical responsibility regarding delegated medical work; (2) Just culture giving fair considerations to medical personnel regarding the errors; (3) Safety culture at the organizational level including incident reporting system which can only be worked well through the atmosphere of open communication and adherence to practice standards. However in Korea, considering realistic situations of patients having much distrust against medical personnel and thus easily making civil and criminal lawsuits, it would be more reasonable to put disproportionate legal lawsuits in order.

Medical errors occur around 5% of admissions, sometimes resulting in serious outcomes. They tend to provoke lawsuits against healthcare workers, causing much concern. Nowadays in Korea, the number of lawsuits is increasing considerably, thus enhancing the need of solutions for this problem.Current Concepts: The present responses of healthcare workers in medical errors are denial. Patients become dissatisfied more against such attitude, increasing possibility of lawsuits. Therefore we need to adopt new strategies for solving this problem, which fortunately have been developed and applied over many countries.Discussion and Conclusion: The harmful results from medical errors can’t be presumed intentional. Further, error-prone culture of workplace act together in raising the events. So, the recent increasing trend of mindless legal judgements based upon considering the consequences of the events seem to be unreasonable. Safety culture being developed and established in many countries intends to prevent diverse adverse events and make trustworthy healthcare system. The major components of safety culture are (1) Frank disclosure of errors to meet the wishes of patients which corresponds to ethical responsibility regarding delegated medical work; (2) Just culture giving fair considerations to medical personnel regarding the errors; (3) Safety culture at the organizational level including incident reporting system which can only be worked well through the atmosphere of open communication and adherence to practice standards. However in Korea, considering realistic situations of patients having much distrust against medical personnel and thus easily making civil and criminal lawsuits, it would be more reasonable to put disproportionate legal lawsuits in order.

BACKGROUND: The intensity of stimulation of intubation was expressed as the product of its force and duration. Theoretically, use of a lightwand might cause less adrenergic stimulation because the elevation of the epiglottis by the laryngoscope blade was not required. However, whether the hemodynamic responses to intubation with the lightwand differ from those with direct laryngoscope was a controversial topic. Additionally, there has been no clear study showing that the hemodynamic response to intubation is affected by intubation time. This study was designed to analyze the relationship between the magnitude of hemodynamic responses and the intubation time. METHODS: 50 ASA class 1, 2 elective surgical patients were randomly allocated into two groups; lightwand or direct laryngoscope group. Anesthesia was induced by a standardized technique. The changes in MAP and HR were recorded just before intubation, after intubation and 1 minute after intubation. Also the intubation time was recorded. RESULTS: There were no differences in MAP, HR, and intubation time between the groups. The following was the final regression equation from multiple linear regression analysis:the degrees of blood pressure elevation = + 11.2239 (P = 0.0296) + 6.6331 (P = 0.0846) x (group) + 1.0400 (P = 0.0004) x (intubation time). Adjusted R2 is 0.84 (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: There was a linear relation between the degree of blood pressure elevation and intubation time in direct laryngoscope group and lightwand group.
Anesthesia ; Blood Pressure* ; Epiglottis ; Hemodynamics ; Humans ; Intubation* ; Intubation, Intratracheal ; Laryngoscopes* ; Linear Models