Patients and families could play a role in helping hospitals learn from mistakes
Early in his career, Séamus O’Reilly applied for a post from which the previous incumbent had been fired, after a chemotherapy overdose left one woman dead and another with irreversible heart damage. He didn’t end up in the job but remained interested in how the hospital responded to its mistakes. One key measure was the establishment of Patient Family Advisory Committees. Professor O’Reilly tells Health Correspondent that the time is ripe to consider a similar move here, in light of the CervicalCheck scandal.
It was 1996 when Séamus O’Reilly interviewed for a job in medical oncology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, a year after the discovery that chemotherapy overdoses had killed 39-year-old Betty Lehman, a Boston Globe health columnist and mother of two, and caused irreversible heart damage to 53-year-old teacher, Maureen Bateman.
