This is another great article by Dr. Perman of the Masters Circle that is pertinent to all.
Harvard Researcher Questions Hospital Safety
Dear Doctor:
Most of us have had the experience of running a chiropractic office, or at least working in an operational chiropractic office – it’s not easy to keep the patients and staff happy and committed and the doctors focused on what’s most important.
But the downside risk of a chiropractic office that falls short of the gold standard of quality care is that a few patients will be unsatisfied, or an assistant or doctor performs badly and needs to find different employment or even different work – the net impact is generally not life-threatening.
Not so with hospitals. I can only imagine how difficult it is to coordinate such a business (let’s keep in mind that hospitals are businesses) – with the size of the team, the overall complexity of delivering on the medical promise, and the inherent danger associated with medical treatment itself, it’s a breeding ground for poor patient care – and that is what a survey of over 4000 articles and papers since 1976 confirms.
Last week, MSN.com published a HealthDay News story on a study that found that almost 43 million patients are harmed by medical treatment worldwide every year. The authors concentrated on seven aspects of patient care – drug reactions, urinary tract infection from catheterization, bloodstream infections from catheterization, pneumonia contracted during a hospital stay, blood clots, injuries from falls, and bedsores.
The findings? 22.6 million years lost in life and in disability, much of which came from premature death from medical errors. Dr. Ashish Jha from the Harvard School of Public Health and his team of researchers stated, “When patients are sick, they should not be harmed by unsafe care – this should be a major policy emphasis for all nations.”
Even allowing for a reasonable number of mistakes, and how hard it must be to run hospitals, these numbers are still mind-boggling and scandalous. How can they sell medicine as a primary healing modality when the damage from the doctor’s approach is so pervasive?
This travesty will continue until someone, some group or some profession puts their foot down and says “Enough!” But no well-intentioned declaration of right will suffice – it must be proven in the marketplace, and that means that each and every chiropractor has a responsibility to get the word out and offer people another path that is safer and more natural.
Yes, there are conditions and problems that require medical care, of that there is no doubt. But the typical patient has not been trained in the ways of wellness, not has he or she been exposed to the chiropractic lifestyle. Who is supposed to reveal these health secrets to them if not us?
Based on this report, it’s not just rhetoric to say that millions of lives are at stake. We can make a significant difference – alert people to the common sense of brain based wellness and regular nerve system care. Tell your patients the truth – you may well be saving their lives by doing so.
Dennis Perman DC,
for The Masters Circle
