On-demand: The Three Victims of Medical Errors: How Supporting the Second can Help the Third and the First

Approximately one in every five hospital inpatients will be the victim of a serious medical error, and these first victims have rightly been the primary focus of patient safety improvement efforts.

However many providers involved in these errors also suffer serious effects, including emotional trauma, career changes, incarceration and suicide. If left unsupported by their institutions, these second victims can also have serious negative effects on the overall patient safety culture of the provider organization, which in some ways can even be considered to be a third victim of the error.

A poor patient safety culture has been shown to negatively impact institutional efforts to improve patient safety, from voluntarily self-reporting errors to compliance with safety and quality improvement protocols, which can then lead to increases in the numbers of first victims of error.

Second victim support can break this cycle. In this webinar, you will learn the negative impact of not addressing this emerging issue in patient safety on individuals, departments and organizations and what constitutes an effective second victim support program and the positive effect that this can have both individually and organizationally.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify the three victims of medical errors and describe the relationship between them as it relates to improving patient safety in healthcare provider organizations
2. Identify strategies organizations can use to support second victims during and after a medical error has occurred.
3. Discuss the positive effects to patient safety of implementing these strategies in an organization , as well as the negative effects of not doing so.