This is the first draft to my Advocacy Project. This draft was written after I did a popular search on solutions to my problem and I used some knowledge that I learned from the HCP to write this draft. This is the draft that I just wrote to write. It was just to get my thoughts out so that I could see a possible direction I could go with this paper.

Alicia Lin

Annie Yaniga

Writing 39C

23 Feb. 2016

Advocacy Project Rough Draft

            Medical malpractice occurs when a doctor or physician holds the professional skill to complete a medical task by still fails to (“malpractice”). Medical malpractice has always been prevalent because of many different factors, not just because of lack of technology, which was what it was before.

            Today medical malpractice is still a large issue because despite the technology we currently have to solve the problems we couldn’t in the past, there are different factors that prevent medical malpractice. One important issue to address is that the current numbers that are portrayed for medical malpractice isn’t completely accurate, since both the patients and other medical professionals don’t report many cases. Patients sometimes don’t report cases because they don’t realize that it’s a case of medical malpractice. Other doctors don’t report each other because social pressures and also not wanting to be known as a “whistleblower”. A “whistleblower” is essentially someone who “backstabs” his or her own kind. So there’s a lot of social pressures to not report any faults of his or her own coworker because by doing so, the “whistleblower” will be shunned, and possibly fired. Word will spread throughout the medical community about what happened and he or she will most likely not be rehired by another hospital. This is an issue that deals with communication between doctors, but there is also a divide between communication between doctor and patient. Because of the doctor’s large amounts of patients, it’s difficult to manage them all equally. There is also this stigma that makes patients scared to tell the doctor their exact symptoms of what they’ve experienced. This further causes communication which could lead to medical malpractice.

            But even with the many cases that don’t get reported, there still is a high amount that does. One of the largest external problems that causes these cases of medical malpractice is the lack of quality training. Because of high demands for doctors as there is an emphasis on equal access of health care, the training part for medical trainees is often rushed. This causes them to lack the time and training they need to accurately diagnose and treat patients. The lack in quality is not just caused by the high demand for doctors but also by a lack of funding. There is a lack of funding to train doctors; this also affects the trainee’s training as the lack of funding would mean there’s less doctors per trainee to for the doctor to properly train and give each trainee the attention they need to be properly and skillfully trained. While these are some of the largest issues that causes this issue there’s many solutions to solve each problem. One of the best way to solve this problem would be to implement video games into the training regimen, However, using technology is not enough to fix the problems we have today; we should revise our current healthcare system to better benefit the community.

            One way to deal with the communication error would be to create better policies or create a new anonymous system that makes it easier for other doctors to report cases of malpractice; it also encourages patients to report their cases of malpractice. This would eliminate the social pressure fro other doctors and so that a doctor could easily report another one’s error. In addition to this, the government should also reform their current healthcare system so that it’s more “patient-driven” and less “consumer-driven”. Basically, this means that rather than benefitting private doctors, public doctors should receive just as much incentive so that regardless of where the patients go, price and other costly factors are not an issue. It would also make the doctors more driven to help the people rather than focussing on making money. Everyone should receive equal and affordable healthcare. Also rather than rushing the training process, doctors should take their time to train the trainees so that they can do they best they can when they become certified physicians. This means that the physician should make sure that the patients have gone above and beyond to meet all the requirements. Just by taking the incentive to becoming a private institution at which doctors can make more money has already made more patient oriented and less consumer. Hospitals should be open for the people, not for the money.

            To combat the issue with the lack of training, video games should be implemented into the training regimen. Video games can offer a much larger range of simulations for not just trainees to learn but also for doctors to brush up on their skills. It is much more cost and time efficient as it would be cheaper in both aspects because a video game could offer a certain simulation at any time compared to waiting for a patient to have this certain issue occur before finally being able to operate and see what goes on. It is also less risky and cheaper, as video games can offer many different simulations and one instant. Video games makes solutions and practice much more accessible.

This is especially apparent in laporscopic sugery as the surgeon uses instruments that resembles controllers to perform surgery. In one controller, it has a camera and controls what the doctor sees. The other land does the tasks in the surgery.

Video games in general not just video game simulations help improve the accuracy and speed of surgeons.

One surgeon plays Monkey Ball 2 before he goes into surgery and this is suppose to make him feel a lot better. Studies have shown that those who still play and have played video games in the past generally does better in accuracy and speed that those who don’t.

Video games serve as a good warm for surgeons before surgery because it makes the surgeon much more focused, which is needed in surgery. Video games also makes the surgeon pay much attention to quick subtle changes and to quickly respond to these changes, which is much needed in surgery, to ensure the safety of the patient.

            All in all, adopting a video games into the training of medical professionals, implementing new policies and system for communication, and revising our current health care system would drastically help improve out medical malpractice rates.