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This Primer provides an overview of the history and current status of the patient safety field and key definitions and concepts. It links to other Patient Safety Primers that discuss the concepts in more detail.

Measuring patient safety is a complex and evolving field, and achieving accurate and reliable measurement strategies remains a challenge for the safety field.

The terms adverse events, near misses, and medical errors are used in patient safety to refer to events where patients were harmed (or easily could have been).