In the other book, surgeon Atul Gawande described how he almost lost an Emergency Room patient who had crashed her car when he fumbled a tracheotomy only for patient to be saved by another surgeon who successfully got the breathing tube inserted. Gawande also has a chapter on doctors’ errors. His point, documented by a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine (1991) and subsequent reports is that nearly all physicians err.
If nearly all doctors make mistakes, do they talk about them? Privately with people they trust, yes. In public, that is, with other doctors in academic hospitals, the answer is also yes. There is an institutional mechanism where hospital doctors meet weekly called Morbidity and Mortality Conferences (M & M for short) where, in Gawande’s words, doctors “gather behind closed doors to review the mistakes, untoward events, and deaths that occurred on their watch, determine responsibility, and figure out what to do differently (p. 58).” He describes an M & M (pp.58-64) at his hospital and concludes: “The M & M sees avoiding error as largely a matter of will–staying sufficiently informed and alert to anticipate the myriad ways that things can go wrong and then trying to head off each potential problem before it happens” (p. 62). Protected by law, physicians air their mistakes without fear of malpractice suits.
John Lucyk on 29 Jan 16How to Leverage the Potential of Mathematical Errors Author(s): Wendy S. Bray Source: Teaching Children Mathematics, Vol. 19, No. 7 (March 2013), pp. 424-431 Published by: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5951/teacchilmath.19.7.0424 Accessed: 29-01-2016 05:23 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content do 3 on Fri, 29 Jan 2016 05:23:09 UTC 3 on Fri, 29 Jan 201 ll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 424 March 2013 * teaching children mathematics | Vol. 19, No. 7 Copyright © 2013 The National CounTcilhoisf TceoanchteenrstodfoMwanthleomadateicds,fIrnocm. w1w3w2..n1c7tm0..1or9g3. .A7ll3rigohntsFrreis,e2rv9edJ.an 2016 05:23:09 UTC This material may not be copied or distributed electronicaAllylloruisneasnuy bojtehecrt ftoormJSatTwOithRouTt ewrrmittsenapnedrmCisosniodnitfiroomnsNCTM. x www.nctm.org to Leverage the Potential of Mathematical EIncorporrating arfocus oon students'rmistakses into your instruction can advance their understanding. By Wendy S. Bray elling children that they can learn from their mistakes is common practice. Yet research indicates that many teachers in the United States limit public attention to errors during math- ematics lessons (Bray 2011; Santagata 2005). Some believe that drawing attention to errors publicly may embarrass error m
