Ep. 7: Unfiltered: Kay Van Wey Goes Deeper on Why Medical Errors Keep Happening | AdvoKAYte Season 2

What if most medical mistakes aren't caused by bad doctors or careless nurses, but by systems that were never designed to prevent human error in the first place?

In this episode of AdvoKAYte: Holding Healthcare Accountable, host Kay Van Wey sits down with Kalee Pair to break down one of the most important conversations of Season 2, her full interview with Dr. Matt Austin, a PhD-level patient safety expert and systems engineer who spent over a decade in the airline industry before bringing that same safety-first thinking to healthcare.

Kay distills the science of patient safety into what every patient needs to understand:

1. Why aviation is dramatically safer than hospitals, and what healthcare refuses to adopt from it
2. How the number of Americans dying from preventable medical mistakes is equivalent to three 747s crashing every single day
3. Why bad systems, not bad people, are responsible for the overwhelming majority of preventable harm
4. What the Swiss cheese model reveals about how catastrophic medical errors actually happen
5. Whether human error can truly be engineered out of healthcare, and what it would take to get there
6. Why good people who enter medicine for the right reasons sometimes get crushed by the system itself

This episode is short, accessible, and genuinely eye-opening. Whether you are a patient, a healthcare worker, or someone who has ever trusted a hospital with your life, this conversation is for you.

At Van Wey & Metzler Law Firm in Dallas, Texas, Kay Van Wey and her team represent families affected by preventable medical errors, hospital negligence, birth injuries, surgical errors, and healthcare system failures. Because accountability in healthcare is not about blame. It is about building a system that is actually worthy of our trust.

 
Listen to the full Episode 2 conversation with Dr. Matt Austin: https://www.vanweylaw.com/advokayte-podcasts/

 
Learn more about Van Wey & Metzler Law Firm: https://www.vanweylaw.com/

 
Subscribe for conversations about:

Patient safety, healthcare accountability, medical malpractice, hospital governance, physician burnout, peer review, medical ethics, hospital leadership, and patient advocacy.

What is AdvoKAYte: Holding Healthcare Accountable?

Most people first heard of Kay Van Wey through the shocking true story of Dr. Death—the infamous Dallas neurosurgeon who maimed and killed patients. Kay stood up to him and the system that enabled him, fighting for the people whose lives he shattered. That case made headlines around the world, but for Kay, it was never about the spotlight. It was about the patients—the mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons—who deserved answers, justice, and dignity.
Now, on AdvoKAYte: Holding Healthcare Accountable, Kay brings that same passion to a new mission: exposing a healthcare system that too often puts profits ahead of patient safety.
With more than 40 years of experience as a medical malpractice attorney, Kay has seen firsthand the devastating impact of preventable medical errors—and uncovered their root causes. She calls out dangerous physicians, profit-driven hospitals, fraudulent schemes, and a system designed to keep patients in the dark.
A lawsuit against a negligent provider can bring justice for the victims, but Kay is fighting for something bigger. She will always stand with individuals and families harmed by medical errors—but she is on a mission to reform the broken healthcare system that is vital to all of us... patients.
This podcast is about more than cases—it’s about change. Patients need a voice. Their voices must be amplified—so loudly and so clearly—that politicians can no longer ignore them. Only then can we demand accountability, reform the system, and make healthcare safer for everyone.
Because as Kay learned from Dr. Death—and countless other cases—the problems are fixable. What’s missing is the will to fix them. And that starts here.
Knowledge is power. Strength comes in numbers. It’s time for patients to matter more than profits—and for preventable medical errors to end.