Misdiagnosis of a neurologic emergency such as stroke can lead to serious morbidity or mortality. Using a large multi-state database, this study examined the likelihood of readmission or inpatient mortality among patients who were initially discharged with nonspecific diagnoses of headache or back pain and found that 0.5% of headache and 0.2% of back pain patients experienced an inpatient death or serious neurological event after ED discharge. Extrapolated to a national level, this translates to over 55,000 patients with adverse outcomes due to a missed diagnosis for headache or back pain.

This retrospective chart review study examined diagnostic errors in neurological cases in an emergency department. The most common sources of error were clinician knowledge gaps, which accounted for nearly half of all identified mistakes, and cognitive slips. Radiology resident misreads were also frequently implicated in missed diagnoses.

This pre-post study used direct observation to assess the completeness of resident handoffs in the emergency department. A checklist improved handoff quality without increasing signout time, providing further evidence for using checklists to augment patient safety.