Patient Safety Books Address Healthcare Delivery System & Medical Error
The Healthcare Delivery System, patient safety, and the deterrence of medical error of been key factors driving advancements in healthcare simulation for years. Yet, despite ongoing educational and training efforts, medical errors remain a leading cause of death in the United States. In the opinion of one surgeon and anesthesiologist, this is a prime example of the Healthcare Delivery System failing those the system was created to serve. This HealthySimulation.com article shares the work of author and healthcare expert, Dr. Ira Williams, and his beliefs on how and why the healthcare system became so flawed.
Throughout his professional career, Williams has served as the president of the Wisconsin Society of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons, in addition to working as a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon and anesthesiologist. Before entering the field, he was commissioned and received his wings as an Air Force navigator at age 20 and was trained as a bombardier in WWII medium bombers in South Korea in 1954. Williams shares that his service on the Wing Staff of a combat-ready unit of three squadrons is what helped contribute to his understanding of “what has always been missing in our current healthcare system.”
According to Williams, failure by every healthcare expert to recognize the fundamental facts regarding the Healthcare Delivery System, i.e., each state’s responsibility, and the current system being devoid of any true systematic characteristics “continue to prove all efforts to improve that system to be empty promises.” However, 50 years ago, he was able to demonstrate healthcare innovation himself by solely organizing a 1-week major surgical mini-residency of any surgical specialty in the nation in Madison, Wisconsin.
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During this event, surgical correction of jaw deformities and surgeons from five states participated. Following their experience, Williams’ post-graduate training model for practicing oral surgeons was rapidly adopted by several surgical training programs, he says. (The American College of Ob/Gyn lamented their lack of mini-residencies for their surgeons in the Joint Commission Journal of Quality and Safety in 2003.)
“The biggest obstacle in improving patient safety is that the majority of medical professions have ‘drank the Kool-Aid.’ There is a code of silence,” Williams explained. “I have testified against surgeons multiple times in Madison because I was the second surgeon that was left with the responsibility to correct the original problem they had created.”
From these testimonials, Williams noted that often medical staff would “circle the wagons” and protect the doctors. He believes that, as long as the code of silence dominates medical staff and hospitals, the industry will continue to discuss how to make patient safety better without any real progress.
“I know how the system is broken, but know, more importantly, I know how to begin to create a far better what I call a 21st-century healthcare delivery system,” Williams said. “I feel [my books] can demonstrate what has been missing in the last three decades of all of the efforts to improve the quality of care in patient safety.”
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Dr. Williams’ Four Healthcare Books
Find The Black Box: 200,000 preventable deaths each year in the US healthcare system is like having 20 Boeing 747 airliners crashing each week. Things are bad in our nation’s healthcare delivery system; people are dying needlessly in hospitals every single day. In Find the Black Box, author Dr. Ira Williams provides a thorough discussion of the American healthcare system and its inherent problems, offering solutions to create a healthcare system that works. Further, Find the Black Box explores the truths behind the continuing increase in medical errors and explains how healthcare in the nation is unorganized, dysfunctional, and chaotic. Williams presents a host of facts to show the inadequacies of current healthcare as he answers these questions:
•What has always been missing in our nation’s healthcare delivery system?
•Why have current efforts failed to change the system that will continue to fail?
•Why are some of these efforts highly questionable, if not illegal?
Check out these additional healthcare simulation books!
Healthcare Warriors: Why and How to Become One: Has our Healthcare System failed you or a loved one? Do you want to take part in making that System far better? Wanted! Healthcare Warriors where they live! Many people complain about our current Healthcare System. Dr. Williams is looking for people who desire to become Healthcare Gamechangers. States are where the current Healthcare Delivery System must be made far better, and Dr. Williams offers a logical and doable process to begin to create a 21st-century Healthcare Delivery System within each state, and Healthcare Warriors can initiate that process where they live.
Misdiagnosed!: Our healthcare system has been developed like a weed patch, with no master plan; and that system’s various components have, each in their own way, contributed to the current healthcare mess in the United States today. Merely changing how healthcare is paid for and made available will still leave our healthcare system with no real regulation and control of the quality of healthcare. In Misdiagnosed! Dr. Ira Williams–experienced surgeon, anesthesiologist, medical malpractice expert witness, medical peer reviewer, and insurance consultant–brings to light many of the issues that plague our healthcare system and offers practical solutions, not only for those in the medical profession but also for average citizens, about how to understand and better the structure of healthcare in America.
First Do No Harm: The Cure for Medical Malpractice: The issue of medical malpractice will not go away. In fact, in the years ahead, the problem and the number of proposed remedies will grow. Nationwide, doctors and other healthcare practitioners are leaving private practice, especially in high-risk areas where malpractice insurance premiums have skyrocketed. Rural hospitals are closing their doors; urban hospitals have difficulty staffing emergency rooms. And yet, organized medicine cannot testify to what it is doing to mitigate the situation. Instead, it hides behind the robes of a judge. Medicine’s primary answer to a patient who questions an unacceptable outcome is, “Sue or forget it.”
This important book offers a radical, yet practical, prescription to remedy the primary cause of medical negligence in America. The cure is simple, inexpensive, and workable. It will enable hospital medical staff to evaluate a practitioner’s capabilities; it will restore community confidence in the medical profession; and it will be effective, in most cases, without the need for attorneys, judges, or juries. Medical malpractice can be cured. This book tells how.
Learn More About Dr. Williams’ Books
Lance Baily, BA, EMT-B, is the Founder & CEO of HealthySimulation.com, which he started while serving as the Director of the Nevada System of Higher Education’s Clinical Simulation Center of Las Vegas back in 2010. Lance is also the Founder and acting Advisor to the Board of SimGHOSTS.org, the world’s only non-profit organization dedicated to supporting professionals operating healthcare simulation technologies. His co-edited Book: “Comprehensive Healthcare Simulation: Operations, Technology, and Innovative Practice” is cited as a key source for professional certification in the industry. Lance’s background also includes serving as a Simulation Technology Specialist for the LA Community College District, EMS fire fighting, Hollywood movie production, rescue diving, and global travel. He and his wife Abigail Baily, PhD live in Las Vegas, Nevada with their two amazing daughters.
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