60秒科学:医院里怎么减少差错
谁都会犯错，特别是在计算器或电子表格里处理数字时。计算自己在披萨上花了多少钱是件小事，而医院里管理药品时，一点儿的差错都可能是致命的，那么，怎么来减少误差的出现呢？
Medical Systems That First Do No Harm
Everyone makes mistakes, especially when it comes to entering numbers into a calculator or spreadsheet. It’s not such a big deal if you’re tracking how much you spend on pizza. But if you’re administering drugs in a hospital, such a slip can be deadly. Now a report in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface 1 [see Harold Thimbleby and Paul Cairns, shows how devices can be programmed to catch at least some mistakes on the spot.
Dosing a patient with 10 times too much medication is disturbingly common. One study suggests this error occurs in 1 percent of all hospital admissions. And though the person punching in the numbers is at fault, most drug-delivery devices don’t help.
In one machine, for example, mistakenly entering a number with two decimal points—like 1.2.3—might be read by the machine as 1.23, or as a 123. To prevent such wild guessing, scientists tested a system that immediately flags any input 2 that’s not a real number. According to their analysis, that safeguard alone could cut factor-of-10 errors in half.
Charles Darwin once noted 3 that “to kill an error is as good a service as…establishing a new truth or fact.” Even more so when killing 4 the error keeps you from killing a patient.
- My computer has a network interface,which allows me to get to other computers.我的计算机有网络接口可以与其它计算机连在一起。
- This program has perspicuous interface and extensive application. 该程序界面明了，适用范围广。
- I will forever be grateful for his considerable input.我将永远感激他的大量投入。
- All this information had to be input onto the computer.所有这些信息都必须输入计算机。
- The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
- Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。