See this:
- Let's assume the average delay is 2 hours.
- During this period, a patient needs to stay in the ward and wait. This is the duration of life that is consumed. (Let's take aside the humanistic cost of suffering. I also try my best and used the word consumed rather than wasted.)
- Our hospital probably admit 60 patients each day, and almost all of them need some drug treatment. In other words, 5 days of human life is consumed every day if we check the prescription once more before dispensing.
- Let's assume the average life expectancy of a patient admitted to our hospital is 15 years. (Given the age and prevalence of multiple diseases, this is probably a slightly optimistic number.)
- The inevitable conclusion is: The recommendation would achieve zero balance on its cost to human life if it could avoid one death in every three years - provided that we neglect the cost of human suffering.
True, no one dies of the policy that seemingly saves lives, but everyone pays part of his time.
And time - in aggregate - is life.
PS. Frequent visitors of this site would have a deja vu feeling as I did an almost identical calculation here two years ago.
As Andre Gide said: Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
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