Hospital General de Zona MF No. 8, Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social. Ciudad Sahagún, Hidalgo. Mexico. E-mail: eglez@hotmail.com
“It’s so horribly simplistic – it doesn’t involve technology, doesn’t involve enormous capital investment, doesn’t involve restructuring healthcare bottom to top, and doesn’t involve government legislation. What it does involve is profoundly courageous and powerful leaders, compassionate caregivers, and the fearless humility to admit when one is wrong.”
John Lewis
Care in emergency departments, is exposed to many threats under the short time that will account for making decisions that can endanger the life of patients. Overcrowding in emergency departments is an additional problem which we have to face every day in social care institutions in our country and that significantly increases the risk of technical errors. Errors in care medical diagnostics and treatments in México are very common, and in addition to generating human suffering, entail significant increase in the costs of care, in addition to a loss of confidence in institutions and a greater risk of medico legal problems. This takes special importance when we attend patients in the emergency room, where the errors can be fatal. Many of these errors can prevent when all the personal knows them processes and manages to secure the safety of the patient. In social care institutions in México, many of the errors in the care medical are latent type, it means that are not caused by the operators in services, without by inadequate facilities, lack of inputs, insufficient human resources, shortcomings in the systems, errors in designs and poor administrative decisions.1-3
Emergency physicians, have to engage in the administrative process, with the intention to create interdisciplinary teams to improve care in our hospital emergency services. Knowledge of the technical aspects is indispensable and the physicians in charge of these services must have these skills, gain additional knowledge in relation to processes and tools of continuous improvement in quality, administrative tools basic, as well as aspects of patient safety. 1-3
In the emergency department often received patients with peptic acid syndrome caused by drug-induced gastritis because of the indiscriminate use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), to prescribe medicines to inadequate doses, or whose selection is not appropriate due to age or previous pathology conditions of patients. In this sense, the article published in the present number “Gastric injury induced by non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and therapeutic strategies for prevention”4, give us important information in relationship to the damage caused by the NSAIDs and some strategies of prevention this injury to the gastric mucosa. This prevention is one of the aspect most important to reduce the period of stay of patients in hospitals. 1-3 On the other hand, the following three articles interesting, “Dual diagnosis: a paradigm shift for addiction treatment by Gómez Benumea”, “Teenage pregnancy: a public health problem extensively studied but with no effective responses by González Espíndola and Paz Bautista” and finally “Maternal feeding and nutritional status of her children: A bibliographic review by Balderrama Díaz and Guzmán Saldaña” are published in the present number of the Journal. 5-7 All health professionals should be well-informed and up-to-date for a good performance of their daily activities. For this reason, we invite the scientific community to visit this Journal and read the publications. We also invite to the health professionals and scientists to contribute with us and submit articles for possible publication in the journal.
1 Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Quality of Health Care in America; Kohn LT, Corrigan JM, Donaldson MS, editors. To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2000. Available
from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK225182/ doi: 10.17226/9728
2 Ramlakhan S, Qayyum H, Burke D, Brown R The safety of emergency medicine. Emerg Med J. 2016; 33: 293-299.
3 Bigham BL, Buick JE, Brooks SC, Morrison M, Shojania KG, Morrison LJ. Patient safety in emergency medical services: a systematic review of the literature. Prehosp Emerg Care. 2012;16: 20-35.
4 Pineda-Peña EA, Chávez-Piña AE. Gastric injury induced by Non-steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs and therapeutic strategies for prevention. Mex J Med Res 2017; 5, 9.
5 Gómez Benumea RA. Dual diagnosis: a paradigm shift for addiction treatment. Mex J Med Res 2017; 5, 9.
6 González Espíndola JA, Paz Bautista JC. Teenage pregnancy: a public health problem extensively studied but with no effective responses. Mex J Med Res 2017; 5, 9.
7 Balderrama Díaz R, Guzmán Saldaña R. Maternal feeding and nutritional status of her children: A bibliographic review. Mex J Med Res 2017; 5, 9.