Short Communication Open Access

To err is human, so to transform is necessary – physician heal thyself!

Abstract

The professional and popular medical literature both have documented and decried the extreme frequency of medical errors and the resulting incidences of preventable patient morbidity and mortality. The fact that this situation persists is in large measure, as Donald Berwick, MD, observed in an April 2016 JAMA article, because “society conceded to the medical profession a privilege most other work groups do not get: the authority to judge the quality of its own work.”1 Therefore, practicing physicians and other clinicians require cognitive support that only information technology (IT) made available as mobile device applications a.k.a. “apps” can deliver. To date, the tools and methods to effect these changes have focused on human factors, safety leadership and organizational culture, and heuristics (e.g. – Patient Safety Movement Foundation’s Actionable Patient Safety Solutions a.k.a. APSS2 and TEAMHealth’s Lean Healthcare3), all of which exacerbate the cognitive overload root cause of medical mistakes, because of their memorization and recall requirements. However, the required cognitive support can be provided only by cloud-based IT in the form of mobile applications a.k.a. “apps.” Commercial off the shelf (COTS) solution support now is both cost-effective and clinically practicable for direct use4 by physicians and other professional provider subject matter experts. Therefore, we posit that IT-enabled cognitive support is the sine qua non for surmounting the aforementioned conditions and challenges that professional provider SMEs face daily; and the often unsuccessful addressing of which lead to their moral injury as described in the July 2018 edition of Statby Simon Talbot, MD, and Wendy Dean, MD, that contributes to physician “burnout.”5By designing and implementing customized cognitive support mobile apps that encapsulate and automate medical standards of care and that enforce best practices, physicians will improve significantly the healing of their patients; and, thereby, themselves.  

 J. Peter Melrose¹, Lee Wise²