A report out this week from the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimates that 1.5 million Americans are being injured each year as a result of prescribing mistakes related to medications. The errors are costing more than $3.5 billion each year. The report also suggests that 7000 people continue to die each year as a result of wrongly prescribed or errors related to medications.
Good thing I don’t write prescriptions. The headlines should have read “Medication Mistakes Continue to Kill and/or Harm Millions.” Silly me, everyone knows chiropractors don’t prescribe medications. Selling drugs, that is the business of medicine. As it turns out, the report is from the well-respected Institute of Medicine. Headlines tonight from several hundred news organizations around the globe read as follows…
The medical approach to health has come to dominate the field of primary health services in our country over the span of the last half-century or so. It goes like this. First, the doctor identifies and lists all the clinical signs and symptoms exhibited by the patient. Second, the resulting list is compared to named diseases and their lists of signs and symptoms. These are then matched up and the patient gets labeled with one or more diseases. Third, the doctor prescribes a treatment to cure the diagnosed disease. Almost universally, this consists of taking medication, due to the underlying philosophy of medicine. When you are ill, you take a pill.
A report out this week from the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimates that 1.5 million Americans are being injured each year as a result of prescribing mistakes related to medications. The errors are costing more than $3.5 billion each year. The report also suggests that 7000 people continue to die each year as a result of wrongly prescribed or errors related to medications.
Good thing I don’t write prescriptions. The headlines should have read “Medication Mistakes Continue to Kill and/or Harm Millions.” Silly me, everyone knows chiropractors don’t prescribe medications. Selling drugs, that is the business of medicine. As it turns out, the report is from the well-respected Institute of Medicine. Headlines tonight from several hundred news organizations around the globe read as follows…
The medical approach to health has come to dominate the field of primary health services in our country over the span of the last half-century or so. It goes like this. First, the doctor identifies and lists all the clinical signs and symptoms exhibited by the patient. Second, the resulting list is compared to named diseases and their lists of signs and symptoms. These are then matched up and the patient gets labeled with one or more diseases. Third, the doctor prescribes a treatment to cure the diagnosed disease. Almost universally, this consists of taking medication, due to the underlying philosophy of medicine. When you are ill, you take a pill.