Patient safety and patient error.

Stephen Buetow; Glyn Elwyn

Commentary

Patient safety and patient error.

January 31, 2007

Buetow S, Elwyn G. Lancet. 2007;369(9556):158-61.

View more articles from the same authors.

The authors discuss the role patients play in contributing to medical error.

PubMed citation

Available at

Related Resources From the Same Author(s)

Approaches to reducing the most important patient errors in primary health-care: patient and professional perspectives.

February 24, 2010

Patient error: a preliminary taxonomy.

May 27, 2009

The patient safety story.

August 17, 2005

Stop the silent misdiagnosis: patients' preferences matter.

November 21, 2012

Understanding unwarranted variation in clinical practice: a focus on network effects, reflective medicine and learning health systems.

February 2, 2020

What attributes of patients affect their involvement in safety? A key opinion leaders' perspective.

September 18, 2013

Systematic review of the effectiveness of strategies to encourage patients to remind healthcare professionals about their hand hygiene.

February 11, 2015

Reporting of perioperative adverse events by pediatric anesthesiologists at a tertiary children's hospital: targeted interventions to increase the rate of reporting.

October 11, 2017

The quality, safety and content of telephone and face-to-face consultations: a comparative study.

June 2, 2010

Qualitative content analysis: a framework for the substantive review of hospital incident reports.

March 23, 2022

Patient safety in anatomic pathology: measuring discrepancy frequencies and causes.

April 15, 2005

Six things every plastic surgeon needs to know about teamwork training and checklists.

March 6, 2013

Simulation in obstetric anesthesia.

November 9, 2011

The current and ideal state of anatomic pathology patient safety.

July 30, 2014

Ethical challenges in child abuse: what is the harm of a misdiagnosis?

June 9, 2021

Improving operating room and perioperative safety: background and specific recommendations.

July 11, 2007

Communication of medical product risk: how effective is effective enough?

March 6, 2005

Medical device-associated safety and risk: surveillance and stratagems.

March 6, 2005

The systems approach at the sharp end.

October 31, 2018

Tools for primary care patient safety: a narrative review.

November 26, 2014

Long-term solution to malpractice crises: reduce harm to patients.

April 26, 2006

To make or buy patient safety solutions: a resource dependence and transaction cost economics perspective.

July 13, 2011

Patient safety climate: a study of Southern California healthcare organizations.

September 5, 2018

An organizational framework to reduce professional burnout and bring back joy in practice.

May 17, 2017

Patient safety in obstetrics and obstetric anesthesia.

April 23, 2014

Getting the board on board: engaging hospital boards in quality and patient safety.

March 29, 2006

When things go wrong: how health care organizations deal with major failures.

March 6, 2005

Three Australian whistleblowing sagas: lessons for internal and external regulation.

March 6, 2005

Visual illusions in radiology: untrue perceptions in medical images and their implications for diagnostic accuracy.

August 11, 2021

Quality in cancer diagnosis.

May 26, 2010

The high-reliability pediatric intensive care unit.

May 22, 2013

Assessment of latent factors contributing to error: addressing surgical pathology error wisely.

November 16, 2011

Creating a highly reliable neonatal intensive care unit through safer systems of care.

November 15, 2017

Patient safety culture in care homes for older people: a scoping review.

December 13, 2017

Failure to report poor care as a breach of moral and professional expectation.

June 19, 2019

Medicines management support to older people: understanding the context of systems failure.

August 6, 2014

Trust, temporality and systems: how do patients understand patient safety in primary care? A qualitative study.

February 25, 2015

Health information technology and patient safety: evidence from panel data.

March 25, 2009

Directed peer review in surgical pathology.

September 1, 2012

Combined proactive risk assessment: unifying proactive and reactive risk assessment techniques in health care.

June 29, 2022

Development of a proactive process to harmonize policy, infusion pump library, and electronic health record entries for continuous infusions at an academic medical center.

September 6, 2023

Early readmissions to the department of medicine as a screening tool for monitoring quality of care problems.

October 1, 2008

Rules, safety and the narrativisation of identity: a hospital operating theatre case study.

March 15, 2006

Health care safety: what needs to be done?

December 7, 2005

'Balancing risk, that is my life': The politics of risk in a hospital operating theatre department.

January 18, 2006

Improving patient safety by taking systems seriously.

February 13, 2008

Conscious sedation on a general ward: the MET and clinical governance.

February 14, 2007

Copying and pasting of examinations within the electronic medical record.

August 30, 2006

Using portable digital technology for clinical care and critical incidents: a new model.

August 17, 2005

Individual surgeon mortality rates: can outliers be detected? A national utility analysis.

November 16, 2016

Mandating limits on workload, duty, and speed in radiology.

July 6, 2022

Liquid-based Papanicolaou tests in endometrial carcinoma diagnosis: performance, error root cause analysis, and quality improvement.

February 1, 2012

Involving patients and carers in patient safety in primary care: a qualitative study of a co-designed patient safety guide.

February 15, 2023

Error and cognitive bias in diagnostic radiology.

April 13, 2022

Addressing prehospital patient safety using the science of injury prevention and control.

November 5, 2008

Adoption of patient-centered care practices by physicians: results from a national survey.

April 26, 2006

Multicenter study to evaluate the benefits of technology-assisted workflow on i.v. room efficiency, costs, and safety.

June 26, 2019

Use of failure mode and effects analysis for proactive identification of communication and handoff failures from organ procurement to transplantation.

October 28, 2009

Whistleblowing and patient safety: the patient's or the profession's interests at stake.

July 20, 2011

Identifying the 'right patient': nurse and consumer perspectives on verifying patient identity during medication administration.

May 11, 2011

Reducing cognitive errors in dermatology: can anything be done?

November 6, 2013

Using statistical text classification to identify health information technology incidents.

May 29, 2013

Identifying unintended consequences of quality indicators: a qualitative study.

December 14, 2011

Standardized sign-out reduces intern perception of medical errors on the general internal medicine ward.

April 15, 2009

A scoping review of legibility of hand-written prescriptions and drug-orders: the writing on the wall.

July 12, 2023

The influence of personality on psychological safety, the presence of stress and chosen professional roles in the healthcare environment.

June 21, 2023

Post-implementation optimization of medication alerts in hospital computerized provider order entry systems: a scoping review.

December 6, 2023

A nomenclature of nomenclature: the sources of terminologic uncertainty and confusion and the value of communication.

March 4, 2009

Measurement of adverse events using "incidence flagged" diagnosis codes.

February 8, 2006

Creating a safer health care system: finding the constraint.

December 21, 2005

Improving patient care by linking evidence-based medicine and evidence-based management.

August 15, 2007

Preventable errors in the operating room--part 2: retained foreign objects, sharps injuries, and wrong site surgery.

August 1, 2007

Student perceptions of medical errors: incorporating an explicit professionalism curriculum in the third-year surgery clerkship.

May 14, 2008

Medication, allergy, and adverse drug event discrepancies in ambulatory care.

March 26, 2008

The incidence and cost of adverse events in Victorian hospitals 2003-04.

June 28, 2006

Adenocarcinoma in situ of the uterine cervix: screening and diagnostic errors in Papanicolaou smears.

March 6, 2005

Measuring inappropriate medical diagnosis and treatment in survey data: the case of ADHD among school-age children.

February 23, 2011

Teaching quality improvement.

September 22, 2010

Digital health and patient safety.

April 27, 2016

Systematic review of patient safety interventions in dentistry.

December 9, 2015

The CARE approach to reducing diagnostic errors.

March 22, 2017

Predictors of serious opioid-related adverse drug events in hospitalized patients.

July 8, 2020

Exploring the factors that promote or diminish a psychologically safe environment: a qualitative interview study with critical care staff.

September 22, 2021

Adoption of order entry with decision support for chronic care by physician organizations.

July 18, 2007

Medical errors arising from outsourcing laboratory and radiology services.

September 19, 2007

Patient identification error among prostate needle core biopsy specimens—are we ready for a DNA time-out?

November 7, 2007

Parents as partners in obtaining the medication history.

June 29, 2005

Medical errors related to discontinuity of care from an inpatient to an outpatient setting.

March 6, 2005

An innovative approach to the surgical time out: a patient-focused model.

June 29, 2016

Understanding factors that impact on health care professionals' risk perceptions and responses toward Clostridium difficile and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus: a structured literature review.

April 10, 2013

Effective discharge communication in the emergency department.

February 1, 2012

The economics of health care quality and medical errors.

November 14, 2012

Huddling for high reliability and situation awareness.

July 24, 2013

Making patient safety event data actionable: understanding patient safety analyst needs.

October 4, 2017

Leadership oversight for patient safety programs: an essential element.

January 17, 2018

Chief of Residents for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety: a recipe for a new role in graduate medical education.

April 12, 2017

Patient safety and quality improvement adaptation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

April 21, 2021

Home health agency patient experience measures and their relationship to Joint Commission accreditation.

June 7, 2023

The role of bias in clinical decision-making of people with serious mental illness and medical co-morbidities: a scoping review.

February 22, 2023

Medication safety gaps in English pediatric inpatient units: an exploration using work domain analysis.

March 6, 2024

Related Resources

Disclosing medical errors: prioritising the needs of patients and families.

July 5, 2023

Early diagnosis of cancer: systems approach to support clinicians in primary care.

April 5, 2023

Using consumer engagement strategies to improve healthcare safety for young people: an exploration of the relevance and suitability of current approaches.

November 30, 2022

A health system that won't learn from its mistakes.

September 21, 2022

Engaging with ethnic minority consumers to improve safety in cancer services: a national stakeholder analysis.

May 25, 2022

Patients' experiences and perspectives of patient-reported outcome measures in clinical care: a systematic review and qualitative meta-synthesis.

May 11, 2022

Humanizing harm: using a restorative approach to heal and learn from adverse events.

May 4, 2022

A family and hospital's journey and commitment to improving diagnostic safety.

March 9, 2022

Associations of person-related, environment-related and communication-related factors on medication errors in public and private hospitals: a retrospective clinical audit.

November 17, 2021

COVID-19 and open notes: a new method to enhance patient safety and trust.

July 7, 2021

Older patients' engagement in hospital medication safety behaviours.

June 16, 2021

Can patients contribute to enhancing the safety and effectiveness of test-result follow-up? Qualitative outcomes from a health consumer workshop.

June 2, 2021

Closing the loop on test results to reduce communication failures: a rapid review of evidence, practice and patient perspectives.

November 25, 2020

Impact of professional interpreters on outcomes for hospitalized children from migrant and refugee families with limited English proficiency: a systematic review.

September 16, 2020

The patient died: what about involvement in the investigation process?

June 24, 2020

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, meaningful communication between family caregivers and residents of long-term care facilities is imperative.

June 24, 2020

The patient perspective on errors in cancer care: results of a cross-sectional survey.

December 1, 2019

Unleash the power of patients to make care safer around the world: an essay by Helen Haskell.

September 25, 2019

Consumers' perspectives on their involvement in recognizing and responding to patient deterioration—developing a model for consumer reporting.

July 24, 2019

What interventions could reduce diagnostic error in emergency departments? A review of evidence, practice and consumer perspectives.

July 24, 2019

'Poking the skunk': ethical and medico-legal concerns in research about patients' experiences of medical injury.

July 17, 2019

Family involvement in managing medications of older patients across transitions of care: a systematic review.

June 26, 2019

Consumer-directed technologies to improve medication management and safety.

April 24, 2019

A systematic review of falls in hospital for patients with communication disability: highlighting an invisible population.

April 10, 2019

"Saying sorry": some strategies for effective apology within the workplace.

January 23, 2019

Patient groups, clinicians and healthcare professionals agree—all test results need to be seen, understood and followed up.

December 19, 2018

Assessment of attitudes toward deprescribing in older Medicare beneficiaries in the United States.

December 19, 2018

Every patient should be enabled to stop the line.

December 12, 2018

Ten principles for more conservative, care-full diagnosis.

October 10, 2018

Changing how we think about healthcare improvement.

June 13, 2018

See More About The Topic

Health Care Providers

Health Care Executives and Administrators

Provider-Patient Communication

Patient safety and patient error.

Connect With Us

Sign up for Email Updates

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Patient safety and patient error.

Connect With Us

Sign up for Email Updates

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Submit Your Innovations

Continue as a Guest

Continue Logged In

Submit Your Innovations

Continue as a Guest

Continue logged in

New Users to the PSNet site