Free Health Dissertations - The Value Of Red Dot System Introduction In The Frequently Frantic And
THE VALUE OF RED DOT SYSTEM
Introduction
In the frequently frantic and universally pressured world of the A&E departments of this country’s hospitals, mistakes get made. This is a fact of life. In any human endeavour this is sadly true. Until recently, the blame culture that was prevalent within the NHS, made certain defensive behaviour patterns amongst staff almost endemic (Vincent, 1994). It is one of the characteristics of a professional life that you have to take responsibility for your actions. If you take the wrong action, you will be criticised. This defensive attitude was, to a large extent, fostered by the professional health insurers who, worried about paying out large quantities of their funds, demanded secrecy, no apology and a defensive stance from those that they insured.(Clinical Services Committee)
It became apparent to those who were in a position to have an overview of the situation that such a situation was actually in nobody’s interest (Barley, 2000). Healthcare professionals were practising defensive medicine, patients were being kept in the dark when mistakes were made, and most important of all, because problems were not examined in an open and constructive way, productive lessons were not learnt. All that was happening was that defensive stances were becoming entrenched.
The advent of the no-blame culture is helping to erode these stances and attitudes (Aldridge 2000). It is allowing the development of practices which may help the efficiency of our hospitals and provide the patient with a better service.
The red dot system arose as a product of both of these factors. The pressure on the A&E department staff is often relentless and great. The structure of the system is that many decisions are taken by comparatively inexperienced staff members and often not the most appropriate for the decision that needs to be taken. Huge numbers of X-Rays are seen by junior doctors and decisions regarding treatment are initially made before a senior specialist has a chance to oversee them. It would follow, by any common sense analysis of the situation, that any measure that could help in the decision making process should be welcomed.
This argument is taken further by the article by Vincent et al. (1988) . In the days before the red dot system was seriously considered, Vincent and his colleagues carried out a study of the radiological errors made by junior hospital doctors. They found an error rate of 35% when the X-Ray was assessed by the SHO alone. For errors with a clinically significant impact the rate was 39% (of abnormal films).
The red dot system represents a mechanism to try to address this gap. It involves the radiographer usually, but not always, the one who has taken the film giving the clinician some feed back. Radiographers see many thousands of films and are generally very familiar with the structures that they show.
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