Human Error in Medicine, Second Edition (Human Error and Safety)

It was not until 1999, five years after the publication of the then revolutionary Human Error in Medicine, that the issue of medical error received broader notice in a report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the U.S. National Academies of Science. This report reinforced the commonly held but not empirically supported belief that adverse outcomes in health care are the result of errors by care providers alone. Medical errors are due most often to the convergence of multiple contributing factors. This second edition of Human Error in Medicine revisits the topic by presenting an expanded consideration of error in health care. Underlying the expansion is an emphasis on the practical, the lessons learned that can be applied not just in hospitals, but also in home care and in self care – an important concern because of the increasing prevalence of chronic illnesses. Bringing together a group of diverse experts, the book covers a wide range of topics from errors in the use of medical equipment including radiology, errors from poor or fatigued decision making, latent surgical errors, both efforts and failures to learn from mistakes, and error reduction through technical advancement and improved facility design.