A second-year resident in internal medicine and primary care knows more than she'd like to about medical malpractice. That's because she was a first-hand witness to countless medical mistakes when her mother was being treated for cancer. Sadly, her mother didn't survive her battle with cancer, and the young doctor thinks it was partially because of the care she received.

The resident doctor said her mom was treated in a good, well-known hospital, but that didn't protect her from medical mistakes that are all too common in Ohio and the rest of the country. She said her mom suffered frequent falls, medication overdoses and almost had an unnecessary brain surgery, although she never saw the blatant malpractice we often hear about.

In one example, the resident's mom fell out of her bed, but no staff members came to assist her because her bed alarm wasn't plugged in. In another example, the resident's mom was given the wrong dosages of medication — and even the wrong medication completely — when her doctors switched shifts.

These ongoing patient safety problems are becoming more of an issue, the resident doctor said, because treatments are growing increasingly more complex, which multiplies the chances for mistakes to be made. Additionally, she said doctors and nurses are habitually overbooked, which means everyone is multi-tasking, which also increases the chances of mistakes.

Ultimately, the resident doctor said she believes the key to promoting patient safety lies in reporting and learning from these errors. She said there is currently a stigma in hospitals that makes doctors and nurses hesitant to report errors, and this has a negative effect on patients. Until this mentality changes, she said, patients like her mom will continue being harmed.

Source: ProPublica, "What a New Doctor Learned About Medical Mistakes From Her Mom's Death," Marshall Allen, Jan. 9, 2013