Arizona medical malpractice lawyers find scant attention is being paid to the prevention of medical injuries caused by misdiagnoses in hospitals, in spite of the fact that these errors are surprisingly frequent occurrences. According to a new study by QuantiaMD, nearly 50% of physicians surveyed found diagnostic errors in their practice at least once every month.

The report, titled Physician Perspectives on Preventing Diagnostic Errors, focused on 6,400 clinicians who were asked about their experiences with diagnostic errors. Nearly half of them, or 47%, said that they found these errors every month in their practice. However, more than 90% believed that these errors were at least partly preventable.

Most diagnostic errors seemed to be the result of physicians’ failure to consider other types of diagnostic possibilities and atypical patient presentations. Additionally, the risk of diagnostic errors also increases under external pressures. Doctors who order too many diagnostic tests may also run the risk of making errors.

In the survey, 64% of clinicians said that at least 10% of the mistakes they made had directly contributed to patient injury. Diagnoses of some types of conditions are at a higher risk for errors than other conditions. For instance, 54% of the clinicians reported errors in the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism, followed by bipolar disorder with 51% of the clinicians reporting errors in the diagnosis of this condition. These conditions were followed by appendicitis, breast cancer, myocardial infection, lung cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, heart failure, stroke, and other types of cancers.

Seventy-five percent of the doctors said that atypical patient representation was a factor in misdiagnoses, followed by a failure to consider other diagnoses, which accounted for 50% of errors. Other factors include inadequate patient history, insufficient follow-up on test results, and failure to account for a symptom, failure to order appropriate tests, inadequate physical examination, and failure to correctly interpret results.