We’ve all seen the billboards and know the figures: Smoking kills! Drinking and driving kills! While these statements are true, a different threat has been creeping up through the ranks of causes of death: medical errors. Stories are all over the internet of nurses giving wrong drugs to patients or surgeons lopping off the wrong leg. For the longest time, these were thought to be rare exceptions, caused by tired or inexperienced medical professionals.
But that school of thought is now moot.
In a recent study from the British Medical Journal, it was revealed that medical errors are now the third-leading cause of death in the United States. According to the report, medical errors take almost as many lives annually as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), suicide, firearms and car accidents combined.