The session will cover strategies and interventions to prevent diagnostic accidents and make consultations more time-efficient, clinically-effective and above all else, safer.  

Learning objectives

    1. Changing the narrative: Accidents, not errors
    2. Understand the causes of diagnostic accidents
    3. Understand the strategies and interventions that can be used to prevent diagnostic accidents
    4. Understand how to review and respond to a diagnostic accident

Studies have shown that about 1-in-10 diagnoses made in primary care are incorrect and that this causes serious harm to a patient in 1-in-1000 consultations. Furthermore, worries about having made or about making a diagnostic error in the future is a source of stress and burn-out for doctors, resulting in early and late career changes for GP’s. In every other industry, people receive training in how to prevent errors but in medicine many doctors receive little if any training in diagnostic error prevention. A fundamental principle in error prevention is that you need to understand why an error has occurred before you can develop a way to stop it from happening again, which is why it is important to learn about the common causes of diagnostic errors and what can be done by GP’s to prevent them.

This session looks at the causes of diagnostic errors but it also seeks to change the way that these events are viewed by doctors through regarding them as being accidents, rather than as errors. Many diagnostic accidents are not the result of acts of omission or commission by the doctor but are the result of limitations and imperfections in the diagnostic process itself. The final part of the session will look at two tools to help you review and respond to a diagnostic accident.

Webinar Chair

Dr Emma Salik, GP, Faculty Education Lead, RCGP Beds and Herts

Webinar Speaker

Dr Paul Silverston, Visiting Professor at Anglia Ruskin University & Visiting Professor of Primary Care at The University of Suffolk

Prices

AiT – £50
Member – £75
Non-member – £100

Delegates must sign up to the three sessions separately (Wednesday 20 March 2024, Tuesday 26 March 2024 and Thursday 18 April 2024) to complete the course, however each part can be undertaken as a stand alone session.